How badly will Obama be treated?

September 16th, 2009

Jay Nordlinger, in a recent Impromptus column, made some predictions about how Obama will be treated during his time as President:

They say that “hate” is rearing its head, and that President Obama and the Democrats are the victims of it. Let me make a couple of predictions: I predict that the chairman of the Republican National Committee will never say, “I hate the Democrats and everything they stand for. This [politics, basically] is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”
Howard Dean said that about the GOP: “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. . . .”
I predict that an editor of a conservative magazine will never write a piece called “The Case for Obama Hatred,” beginning, “I hate President Barack Obama.”
A New Republic editor did this, about Bush.
And there is increasing worry about assassination: that someone will take a shot, not just at the president, but at the first black president, which would be extra-catastrophic for the country. A few protesters have carried signs urging violence against Obama, or smacking of violence. Let me make some more predictions:
I predict that a network talk-show host will not show a video of President Obama giving a speech and put the following words on the screen: “SNIPERS WANTED.”

Craig Kilborn of CBS did that to George W. Bush.
I predict that U.S. senators will not joke about killing Obama.
In 2006, Bill Maher had a conversation with John Kerry. He asked Kerry what he’d gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry said he had treated her to a vacation in Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” Kerry replied, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.”
This is the same Kerry who, in 1988, said, “Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle.” Then he said, “There isn’t any press here, is there?”
I predict that a New York official will not tell a graduating class about assassinating President Obama.
Also in 2006, comptroller Alan Hevesi said to students at Queens College that Sen. Charles Schumer, his fellow Democrat, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”
I predict that no columnist for a leading European newspaper, and leading world newspaper, will write, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”
Charlie Brooker of the Guardian did that to George W. Bush.
I predict that no major writer will write a novel debating the morality of killing President Obama.
Nicholson Baker did that to Bush, with Checkpoint.
I predict that no filmmaker will make a “fictional documentary” that fantasizes — and I’m afraid that is the word — about murdering President Obama.
Some Brits did that to President Bush with Death of a President.

Remember all of that next time you read a news article or see a TV commentator talk about the lowering of political discourse. By and large, the protests and comments against Obama and the Democrats have been issue-related and polite. Naturally, there are nuts out there on every side, but with conservatives, the crazies are the exceptions. When Bush was in office, and even today, the same can’t be said for the left.

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How badly will Obama be treated?

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