During one of the 2000 debates, I remember Al Gore claiming to have accompanied some FEMA official or another on a trip to Texas to survey wildfire damage.
Except it turned out he hadn’t. It was good for him in the debate to have done that, so he said he had. I commented at the time on Usenet that Gore lies like 10-year-old boys lie. He quickly formulates something to say that gains him instant contextual status, without regard to how the lie is going to play later. Happened a lot.
I thought of Gore and his tendencies immediately upon reading what our esteemed president had to say to the Hampton University graduating class yesterday:
And with iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.
This is absurd on every level. For one thing, how much did the mobile web have to do with Obama’s election? For another, how much did we hear about how he wasn’t going to relinquish his BlackBerry? For another, hasn’t the guy mentioned his iPod explicitly a few times?
Would he have us believe he owns one and can’t use it? (I guess they’re good enough to give British royalty, though. Wonder if Queen Elizabeth II ever filled out an Amazon.com wish list for future state gifts?)
This is a shameless lie, told by a fundamentally insincere and dishonest person who effortlessly (usually; heh) moves in and out of personae as easily as changing jackets. For whatever reason, Obama decided that he needed to be a Luddite codger at yesterday’s ceremony, so that’s who he became.
Or do we have a genuinely innocent reading of Obama claiming he can’t use an iPod out there? Speak up.
(I’m sure you can trust him the rest of the time, though.)
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Considering the man has a BlackBerry welded to his palm I say it’s Hucksterism. If that’s a word. I love your insights on Gore – got a good chuckle out that. 🙂
Haha! Love that picture! Isn’t that the universal perplexed dog expression?
More chilling than the sudden, false, old-fogeyism is his message that we are receiving TOO MUCH INFORMATION OUT THERE.
To make such statements is just wrong for any politician. He isn’t even hiding the fact he wants a public, ignorant of ideas and unable to read other peoples expressions of ideas.
He’s a moron.
Bad enough I had to watch endless replay of the graduation speech while waiting for the dang weather reports….