"Mandela Interpreter Says He Was Hallucinating/Says He Entered Altered State As He Took His Place on Stage."

That might excuse him, but it does not excuse whoever did the security check.

Thamsanqa Jantjie said... that as he took the stage within arms' length of Mr. Obama and other leaders at a memorial in a Johannesburg soccer stadium on Tuesday, he slipped into an altered state. He said he saw angels coming into the stadium.

"I don't know the attack of this problem, how will it come... Sometimes I get violent on that place. Sometimes I will see things chasing me."

"Mitt Romney’s son rescued four people from a car crash—then tweeted a photo of himself grinning next to the wreck."

"Bad move if you’re an aspiring politician from a family with a reputation for being out of touch."

“Was first on scene to big accident, see pic of car in the house,” Josh tweeted. “I lifted 4 people out to safety. All ok. Thankful.” Accompanying the tweet was a the moral equivalent of a selfie of Josh standing proudly in front of the wrecked SUV that had just destroyed some homeowner’s kitchen.

Weirdly, he is grinning—the symptom of either a relentlessly sunny personality or else an alarming incapacity to empathize with another person’s horrible luck.

Poor Josh Romney. Even when he's out there saving lives, he must be ever on guard lest he create evidence that can be used to say, one more time, Romney is out of touch.

By the way, Barack Obama is always smiling — including while standing in front of wrecks worse than a car that crashed into a kitchen but didn't injure anyone. Somehow his smile always fits the preferred media framing: Whatever happens, we still love him as a person.

IN THE COMMENTS: MadisonMan said:

How is that a selfie? Is his right arm 25 feet long with multiple joints?

CWJ said:

[M]y take was that either Josh reflexively smiled when the camera was pointed at him, or that the amateur photographer might actually have said "cheese" or its equivalent.

I said:

Yeah... I can imagine a lot of jokes that could be made, like "Hey, where's Seamus?!!!"

More seriously, Paddy O said:

I think of news people who always need to be on the scene of a disaster. That's much worse, I think.

For people who grow up in social media, this is a way of sharing what happened, a traumatic event that ended better than it might have. Maybe the smile was out of place, but it's very human.

If a person didn't start by hating the Romneys, this wouldn't even be an issue.

And I said:

Property damage is worth laughing at when you know the people are all safe. If you've ever been in a situation like that, you know we're all safe is everything. Then you look at the wreck and you can laugh.

The people who don't understand that kind of laughing should reflect and then give thanks if what I suspect is true: They never lost a loved one in a car crash.

ADDED: On the "selfie" issue. The article at The Daily Beast does say "the moral equivalent of a selfie," as I've quoted, and the headline at the link is "Josh Romney’s Awkward Car-Crash 'Selfie,'" with "selfie" in quotes. You might argue that "selfie" is in quotes because it's slang, but The Beast can say it's in quotes because it's not actually a selfie, but it's the moral equivalent of a selfie. And the failure to put "selfie" in quotes in the phrase "moral equivalent of a selfie" squarely refutes the quotes-because-it's-slang interpretation.

In these the last days of Obama as a religion, the WaPo writes of the "dwindling faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes that have buoyed him in the past."

Oh, the language of the once-true believers is so careful! And yet you can still see that it was a religion, kind of a religion. There was faith, but it's dwindling. It was faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes. And our faith buoyed him. We kept him aloft in the heavens and — this is a report on a poll — in the polls.

On three measures of leadership and empathy that have been tested repeatedly in Post-ABC polls, Obama now is underwater on all three for the first time. Half or more now say he is not a strong leader, does not understand the problems of “people like you,” and is not honest and trustworthy. Perceptions of the president as a strong leader have dropped 15 points since January, and over the past year the percentage of registered voters who say he is not honest and trustworthy has increased 12 points....

Also interesting, but not specifically about Obama:

Forty-three percent say the Republican Party is too conservative, compared with 36 percent who say its views are just right. For Democrats, 46 percent say the party’s views are too liberal and 41 percent say they are about right.

So more people think the Democrats are too liberal than think the Republicans are too conservative. But the "about right" percent is 5 points higher for Democrats than for Republicans. Unless more people have no opinion of Republicans than of Democrats, that must mean more people think Republicans are too liberal than think Democrats are too conservative.

Ratings for the tea party movement are quite similar to those of the Republican Party. But in the aftermath of the partial federal government shutdown, a majority say they oppose the movement for the second time in two months. And more than four in 10 say the movement has too much influence on the GOP, while only 25 percent say its influence is about right.

Does that mean that about 35% would like the Tea Party to have more influence — and 60% say the Tea Party should have as much or more influence than it has now? Considering that Democrats were being polled here too, that sounds like an amazing amount of support for the Tea Party.

ADDED: I'm addressing the form of expression in the article, but I realize that I can click through to the details. 17% think Republicans are too liberal and 10% think Democrats are too conservative.And 21% think the Tea Party has too little influence in the Republican Party. 11% have no opinion. So 46% think the Tea Party has either the right amount of influence or should have more. Only 43% think it has too much.

AND: Here's the detailed view on the Tea Party question. Among Republicans, 40% say "about the right amount" and 26% say "too little," for a total of 66% percent positive. 26% say too much. Among Democrats, 59% say too much. Interestingly, among the 18 to 39 year-old group, 47% say right amount or too little, and 39% say too much. It's the oldest group — 65 and older — that is most antagonistic to the Tea Party. 50% say too much, and the combined too little and right amount group is 39%.

BUT: Here's the detailed view on the question of whether people support or oppose the Tea Party, and there you see clear opposition in the 18 to 39 year-old group.

From "Change" to "Exchange" — the deflation of Obama elation and how can old enthusiasts find comfort.

Surely, it must be happening, an emergent Obama nostalgia, to take the edge off the dreariness of what the Obama administration has become. There must be those who, seeking solace, are looking back to old comforts like Obama Girl:



Let's close in on that 4th verse:

You’re into border security
Let’s break this border between you and me
Universal healthcare reform
It makes me warm
You tell the truth unlike the right
You can love but you can fight
You can Barack me tonight
I’ve got a crush on Obama

Oh, it's so hard to keep nostalgia pure. Can you watch — and by "you," I mean only those who have loved Obama — and not talk back? Universal healthcare reform/It makes me warm. Yeah, "warm" as in: overheated with anger. You tell the truth unlike the right... Yeah, that's true if you read it the right way. It could mean that all politicians talk at us in a manner that is intended to be received as "truth-telling," that contains elements of truth, exaggeration, and falsehood, and that there are different ways to perform this necessary political activity, and the politicians on the right do it one way, and the way Obama does it is a different way.

Having voted to legalize marijuana, Coloradans now vote to tax it.

Heavily.

Well, of course. You legalize it so you can tax it. To repurpose an old Obama-and-marijuana quote: That was the point.



Obama's appearance arrives at 0:57, after which a commenter (Howard Fineman) opines: "One of the reasons Barack Obama is so popular, especially among younger people, is that he seems so real, he seems to acknowledge the reality of things. It's kind of almost like a dog whistle kind of thing. Older people can't hear it. Younger people hear it. And that's one of the things that they hear. He seems to be willing to be honest."

I need some medical marijuana for my hearing. I'm old. I was old back in 2006 when that clip came out. Yes, I voted for him, but not because I believed he was a new kind of honest. And now, in 2013, watching that, what I hear — on the sound wavelengths that penetrate my old head — is the word "seems," screeching out of Fineman's word montage: He seems so real... he seems to acknowledge... He seems to be willing to be honest.

"Seems" and "willing."

Willing... like: Okay, I'll go along with this looking-honest bullshit for you folks for a while. So follow me, little puppies. I've got a new kind of reality kind of thing to kind of like show you. Can you, like, you know, hear it, kids?

And I got a big laugh out of Kathleen Parker, at the very end saying, "The thing people can't stand is the lies." I then rewatched the clip and lingered over the part where they showed Bill Clinton saying he "experimented" with marijuana and "didn't like it" and "didn't inhale." I found that very refreshing.

That's the kind of honesty I like right now. It was a lie, and you knew it was a lie when he told it. There was none of this feeling of oh, wow, look at the reality, man. What felt real was: There's a politician that will smile and lie straight to our faces. He's a liar.

Those were the days.

"I have plenty of reservations about everything Obama’s doing now – I’m not so into domestic drones, I’m not so into spying."

Said the artist Shepard Fairey, whose advertisement for "HOPE" conned the world.

I did a Google images search on "hope" and Fairey's poster did not come up first. This did. It didn't even come up second. This bullshit did. It didn't even come up third. This treacle did. This dumb thing was fourth. And this insipidity came up fifth. Some lady's hands offering us "hope" written on a piece of paper is sixth. 7-13 are also not Fairey's Obama poster. 14 is a parody of the Obama poster:



I had to go all the way to the 18th hit to get to the Obama poster:



And here's the Wikipedia article on "Hope."

Hope is the state which promotes the desire of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one's life or in the world at large....

What a bad idea for a political slogan. Obviously... now.

Obama's name comes up near the top of this article, right next to this diagram:



We're told of some book that examines "Dealers in Hope," including Obama (and Moses) and says that a leader can "Lead Change and Shape Culture" "by creating a hopescape and harnessing the hope system," and if you look again at the diagram, you'll see the "hope diamond" to be made from that lump of coal labeled "adversity." Just get some voice and promises vectors going into your imagination machine.

What the Republicans need is "a real conservative with a great personality, and those people are hard to come by."

So said Bernard Goldberg, perhaps not intending to insult Republicans (as people with a personality problem). Context:

Nobody articulates conservatism as clearly and passionately as Rush Limbaugh. He'd be the first to acknowledge that he couldn't win a national election. The true blue real conservative Republicans need to understand is that, despite what they think, most Americans don't think the way they do. They'll never elect a Dennis Kucinich on the left, and I don't believe they're gonna elect a Ted Cruz on the right. The only reason Barack Obama, who's more liberal than all of them, got elected, wasn't because of his politics, but because he created a cult of personality, and that's what the Republicans need, a real conservative with a great personality, and those people are hard to come by.

That's a very high standard of great personality: the Barack Obama standard. A personality upon which you can build a cult of personality. But the point is: America wants moderates, and they only deviate when bamboozled by someone with an over-the-top great personality. Such folk are hard to find, and it's a good thing too.

That was quoted on Rush Limbaugh's radio show yesterday — unsurprisingly. (Rush loves to play clips that call out his name._ Rush takes Goldberg to be saying Republicans — including and especially Rush — have off-putting personalities. Rush believes himself to have a great personality, and he also thinks — one of his most often-stated beliefs — that Americans do want a true conservative.

The reason I couldn't win is that I've been demonized. My reputation has been demonized and assaulted for 25 years.  And even had I chosen on each occasion to respond to it and to try to defend it, it wouldn't have mattered, because I woulda still been a lone wolf.  The truth of the matter here is, it's not conservatism that can't win.  It is that conservatism has been so ogre-ized and so demonized by an alliance of the Democrat Party and the media.

"Community organizers like President Barack Obama make great husbands."

Begins a Margaret Carlson column.

They listen before making decisions, never insist that it’s their way or the highway, and won’t leave the cap off the toothpaste tube. They consult on the big life stuff such as where to live, and they rarely draw red lines. When they do, they agonize over whether sending the children to bed without dessert sends the right message.

This must make Michelle Obama very happy; Americans, less and less. The president’s community-organizing skills don’t so much make him lead from behind as they make him lead this way and that (let’s bomb Syria; oh, dear, let’s not). He wants to please everyone, but in the real world, only one faction can be satisfied at a time, leaving everyone else very unsatisfied....

Is this Obama's problem, wanting to please everyone, wanting to give everyone their say?

And has it ever been established that the community organizer phase of Obama's life represented his true core, the real structure of his character, where his most basic attributes had the best fit?


It's something he did between the years 1985 and 1988. It's a meme about him, a meme that worked as he campaigned for political office (and campaigning has occupied far more of Obama's time over the years than community organizing).

Here's Byron York in September 2008 asking "What Did Obama Do As A Community Organizer?
And is it really a qualification to be president?" Excerpt:

... Obama seemed to realize that it was very, very hard to get anything done. “He didn’t see organizing making any significant changes in things,” Jerry Kellman recalled.

The solution, Obama felt, was to find a way to political power of his own.

“He was constantly thinking about his path to significance and power,” Mike Kruglik told me. “He said, ‘I need to go there [Harvard Law School] to find out more about power. How do powerful people think? What kind of networks do they have? How do they connect to each other?’”

In a few months, Obama was gone. He had been an organizer for three years. When he returned to Chicago after law school...

Note that law school also takes 3 years.

... he did some voter-registration work and then joined a civil-rights practice. In 1996, he ran for the state senate. Eight years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and within a year after that he was exploring a run for president....

Community organizing is just as essential in understanding Obama. But what does it say about him?...

When he left for law school, Obama wondered what he had accomplished as an organizer. He certainly had some achievements, but he did not — perhaps could not — concede that there might be something wrong with his approach to Chicago’s problems. Instead of questioning his own premises, he concluded that he simply needed more power to get the job done. So he made plans to run for political office. And in each successive office, he has concluded that he did not have enough power to get the job done, so now he is running for the most powerful office in the land.

And what if he gets it? He’ll be the biggest, strongest organizer in the world. He’ll dazzle the country with his message of hope and possibility. But we shouldn’t expect much to actually get done.

"Where's Bruce Springsteen? He helped Obama get elected. Shouldn't he weigh in on the Syria question?"

Asks Meade, after he sings along awhile with the song I'm playing on my iTunes as a consequence of that "Oh" discussion in the previous post.

I say: "Yeah, what are all the celebrities saying about Syria? Are any of them talking now?" They loved to love Obama on the issues they loved to love him about. They helped America love him, and they looked so lovable loving him like that. But they won't look so pretty talking up a war, so I think they're off somewhere else. La la.

What was the song Meade sang? It wasn't Bruce Springsteen. I've got zero Springsteen in my iTunes. In that earlier post, we were listing our songs that begin with "Oh," and American Liberal Elite, tweaking the rules, said "Ohio." So here at Meadhouse, it was tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we're finally on our own....

And what does Neil Young think about Syria? Neil did have an Obama-era song about war. Guess what? War became complex and nuanced. He sang: "When I sing about love and war/I don’t really know what I’m saying." He explained that love and war are "very deep subjects."

You can’t possibly know what it means to somebody else. War to one person may mean a justified thing that’s happening for a very good reason, and another person may think that’s a terrible thing and never should have happened. And another person will be thinking that he lost his sister or his brother or his mother in the war and it was a waste of time. And another person could be thinking the exact opposite: that his brother went to war and gave his life for our country. So you can’t really have an opinion, although I have opinions and I’ve had them and I’ve made very loud statements about things. But that’s the way I felt at the time.

Back in the Bush administration, when he did an album called "Living With War"...

I was very outspoken about the anger I felt about certain things that were happening at that time in history. But again, I was no more right than the people who believed in it because it was such a big thing — how can you know? How can you know all of the reasons and everything that’s happening? I just don’t enjoy war. I’m not like a fan of war. And love can be very damaging, and it can be very good. So you just don’t know where to go with these things....

There's always Obama good, Bush bad. Love Obama. Hate Bush. Everything becomes so deep and complex when you're contemplating the one you love.

So I wrote about that — the quandary of not knowing what to do with any of those things. It’s kind of a useless point of view.

Oh! There's a little truth from a celebrity: It’s kind of a useless point of view.

Now playing in the Theater of Racial Reconciliation: the George Zimmerman trial.

TalkLeft says:

Lawyers for the [Trayvon] Martin family now say the case is not about racial profiling or race.... Then why did Benjamin Crump say race was "the elephant in the room." Racial injustice was the core of their argument. It was always about race to them. Race was what they used to transform this local shooting into a case of national importance.

Meanwhile, at Instapundit:

IT’S REALLY BEGINNING TO LOOK AS IF CHARGES NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN BROUGHT HERE: Neighbor, cop back George Zimmerman’s account of fight with Trayvon Martin.

Watching much of the trial these last 3 days, I've come to believe that the prosecution is conducting a theatrical performance in racial reconciliation. It wasn't politically easy to decline to prosecute Zimmerman, even though the evidence showed he could not be convicted, so this prosecution was mounted to demonstrate to the public that Zimmerman should not be convicted. I'm not condoning this use of the power to prosecute. I'm simply observing what is happening. I think the trial is theater, and if it's done right — with people like Crump contributing what they can — the people who got stirred up in Act I can experience catharsis.

Remember Act I? It had that wonderful cameo performance from President Obama:



He told us this was "a tragedy." Catharsis "is a metaphor originally used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of tragedy on the spectator":

In his works prior to Poetics, Aristotle had used the term catharsis purely in its medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the katamenia — the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material).  Here, however, he employs it as a medical metaphor. F. L. Lucas maintains, therefore, that purification and cleansing are not proper translations for catharsis; that it should rather be rendered as purgation. "It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions."...

"In real life," [one scholar] explained, "men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean." Tragedy is then a corrective; through watching tragedy, the audience learns how to feel these emotions at proper levels."

In the end, one must hope, we will come into balance.

"South Africa's Mandela 'improving' as Obama flies in."

Headline at Reuters inspires me to compose a poll. (I wish Mandela well and apologize in advance for the skepticism displayed here, which has nothing to do with South Africa's national hero, but with the U.S. President and the journalism profession, both of which desperately need critique.)

What is, most likely, the truth behind this headline?
	Nothing. It's just a coincidence of 2 events.
	Obama's arrival is having a healing effect on Mandela.
	The news of improvement was concocted to keep Mandela from overshadowing Obama.
pollcode.com free polls

NYT acknowledges Obama's difficulties interacting with foreign leaders.

The article has headline that shifts the blame away from Obama — "Extending a Hand Abroad, Obama Often Finds a Cold Shoulder" — but read the first few paragraphs, and you'll see that the style Obama uses on us American citizens doesn't work on foreign leaders.

Paragraph 1:

Over porterhouse steak and cherry pie at a desert estate in California earlier this month, President Obama delivered a stern lecture to President Xi Jinping about China’s disputes with its neighbors. If it is going to be a rising power, he scolded, it needs to behave like one.

You've got to wonder why "deliver[ing] a stern lecture" and "scold[ing]" equals "extending a hand."

Paragraph 3 has Obama trying "to lighten the mood" with Vladimir Putin "by joking about how age was depleting their athletic skills." Putin responded with what the NYT calls "a taut smile": "The president just wants to get me to relax." Including Putin in the self-deprecation that's supposed to be friendly and humorous is — unlike lecturing and scolding — fairly characterized as "extending a hand," but the point is, the article portrays Obama as ineffectual.

Scrolling toward the end:

Mr. Obama differs from his most recent predecessors, who made personal relationships with leaders the cornerstone of their foreign policies. The first George Bush moved gracefully in foreign capitals, while Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush related to fellow leaders as politicians, trying to understand their pressures and constituencies.

“That’s not President Obama’s style,” said James B. Steinberg, Mr. Clinton’s deputy national security adviser and Mr. Obama’s deputy secretary of state.

But what is his style then? Steinberg doesn't say and one must struggle to read between the lines. I would tend to infer that Obama is relying on the way people are supposed to relate to him, which is to love or at least really like him. Others are supposed to respond to his uplifting presence.

The article ends, not with a conclusion about what Obama is doing and why it doesn't work, but with more detail on Putin:

Their first meeting was marked by a nearly hourlong lecture by Mr. Putin about all the ways the United States had offended Moscow. At their second, Mr. Putin kept Mr. Obama waiting 30 minutes.

And there's a quote informing us that "Obama doesn’t really take kindly to being harangued," which is interesting, considering that the article began with the steak-and-cherry-pie anecdote about Obama lecturing Xi.

Why are the figures on our national stage so lacking in greatness?

I wonder — as I scan the news this morning for topics and stop to think about Howard Kurtz and Jason Collins. Kurtz isn't a bold or great writer. He was dependent on Tina Brown, and he crossed a line, got a little edgy but didn't bother to sharpen up for the attempted edginess, and he got cut. Tina Brown runs her various operations. Is she at the level that should awe us?

Jason Collins was never a great basketball player. It's pathetic — a literal joke — that must we look at basketball to find men to look up to. (They are tall.) But this week, we're expected to admire this athlete we hadn't heard of before not for any athletic achievement but for the miniature feat of revealing — after years and years of hiding — that he's gay. Did he risk anything? His revelation comes at the end of his lackluster career, he's receiving plaudits from everyone on up to Barack Obama, and since his college days, he's had powerful political friends including Chelsea Clinton and (his erstwhile roommate) Joe Kennedy.

Is Barack Obama a great man? He's reached the top position. That takes some doing. He scrambled up over a number of people — were they great? — and he maintained his position, but is he great? We — some of us — like him. He seems like a good person — to some people, the ones who feel comfortable enough with him because at least he's not Bush, he's got a nice smile that reminds us of hope and Republicans seem mean, and it's not really his fault that there are so many problems.

And how about those Clintons and Kennedys and — as long as we're listing American dynasties — Bushes? There are no giants here. Why are the figures on our national stage so lacking in greatness?

It must be us. This must be our doing. Our preference.

IN THE COMMENTS: Jonas quotes George Carlin:

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"

Henry and Balfegor both mention Steve Jobs as the last great man. When I wrote "Kurtz isn't a bold or great writer," I immediately thought Christopher Hitchens.

Did President Obama violate the precepts of etiquette and display raging narcissism at the funeral of Daniel Inouye?

It's pretty much what everyone is saying, notably Emily Yoffe at Slate (where one ordinarily expects support for the Prez). When I encounter a controversy at this late stage of one-sidedness, my instinct is to develop the other side. Law school class is like that, you know. If there's a case that everyone just somehow knows is rightly decided, the way to have a discussion about it isn't to remark upon its obviousness, but to figure out how someone — someone intelligent, educated, and sane — could think it wasn't right. That's what I do.

Read Yoffe's description of Obama's eulogy, which dwells on Obama's own life, growing up in Hawaii, the state Inouye represented in the Senate. Obama talks about his family vacations, where they stayed in motels, and the motel rooms had TVs, and — "as the people must have been twitching in the pews wondering where this was all going" — the Watergate hearings were on TV, and so he saw Inouye, and because Inouye did not have that typical white person look, the young mixed-race Obama was inspired to imagine "what might be possible in my own life."

A funeral for a very old person — Inouye was 88 — is not an occasion for deep mourning or soothing profound shock. It can be an occasion to look back on the era, to indulge one's own personal connections to the time and the man who has passed on. And if the President of the United States speaks at the funeral, that in itself is a phenomenal honor for the deceased. The President should not read a typical eulogy, a conventional account of the dead man's achievements and wonderful personal traits. This is something different. And when the President is specifically noted for his oratory, something special is anticipated.

No one — I submit — was "twitching in the pews wondering where this was all going." They were rapt, experiencing the gift of a unique presentation, The Story of a Boy — that boy! — and how his individual history merged with The Story of America — A Story of Race. They knew, as they surrendered themselves into the hands of our storyteller-in-chief, that they would be cared for and rewarded. The threads would come together, the yarns would be knitted into a beautiful eulogy blanket, under which Daniel Inouye could be laid to rest and all would be comforted.

How dare you snatch that comfort away by counting the "I"s and "me"s in that speech?!

Obama promises "meaningful action... regardless of the politics."

Noted.

Obama's statement is...
	Meaningful and not political.
	Meaningful and political.
	Not meaningful but political.
	Neither meaningful nor political.
pollcode.com free polls

"Meaningful" was a vogue word circa 1970s. Back when people were acting as if sex outside of marriage was new idea and "pre-marital sex" seemed to be missing the point, the term "meaningful relationships" had its day. That faded over time. I'm not sure exactly how or when. It wasn't just sex but also politics that were supposed to be meaningful. One imagined wellsprings of inner satisfaction opening up. It was almost even religious. Or not religious, but spiritual. A rabbi wrote a book called "The Politics of Meaning." It turned Hillary Clinton on and made Michael Kelly write a NYT article titled "Saint Hillary."

Driven by the increasingly common view that something is terribly awry with modern life, Mrs. Clinton is searching for not merely programmatic answers but for The Answer. Something in the Meaning of It All line, something that would inform everything from her imminent and all-encompassing health care proposal to ways in which the state might encourage parents not to let their children wander all hours of the night in shopping malls.

That was written in 1993. (Michael Kelly died in 2003, in service as an embedded journalist in Iraq.) In 2008, Jonah Goldberg published a book called "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." In 2010, we got our all-encompassing health care, not from Saint Hillary, but from Saint Barack. We called it Obamacare, because Obama cares, cares about meaning, regardless of the politics.

Barack Obama has written 2 books. The word "meaningful" appears once in "Dreams from My Father" ("meaningful time frame") and 7 times in "The Audacity of Hope":

1. "[W]hat binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done."

2. "I have criticized the [Bush] Administration for lacking a meaningful health-care agenda...."

3. "[T]he standards and principles that the majority of Americans deem important in their lives, and in the life of the country—should be the heart of our politics, the cornerstone of any meaningful debate about budgets and projects, regulations and policies."

4. "[W]e already have hard evidence of [school] reforms that work... meaningful, performance-based assessments that can provide a fuller picture of how a student is doing...."

5. "[A lesbian] knew when she decided to support me that I was opposed to same-sex marriage, and she had heard me argue that, in the absence of any meaningful consensus, the heightened focus on marriage was a distraction from other, attainable measures to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians."

6. "[W]here there’s strong evidence of prolonged and systematic discrimination by large corporations, trade unions, or branches of municipal government, goals and timetables for minority hiring may be the only meaningful remedy available."

7. "I wanted to call [an immigration activist group] and explain that American citizenship is a privilege and not a right; that without meaningful borders and respect for the law, the very things that brought them to America... would surely erode...."

What meaning is contained in "meaningful" for Barack Obama, specifically, and for all of us?

Something terrible has happened. Children were killed, seemingly senselessly. We are bereft of meaning. The President deems it meaningful to speak, to offer us meaning, not for why that happened, but in the future. An action has horrified us, an action in the past, which we cannot change. But in the future, actions can be taken. We can do something there in that place of hope. So meaning, meaning... where is meaning? Put it in the future, where the action is. Meaningful action.

There, now. Are you salved? Are you saved? Is there meaning?

"President Obama honors Rosa Parks anniversary with picture of himself."

Noooo! This is so bad, I'm embarrassed for him. I want to say he meant to honor Rosa Parks, and he was thinking of the people who would feel uplifted to see the President engaging in this... this... gesture. Obviously, somebody advising him thought this was a good idea. Maybe he just sat down and got all thoughtful and the photographer caught a moment in which he just happened to look like the famous picture of Rosa Parks.... Maybe.... I don't know. I feel embarrassed for him. But... it's a question of taste. He meant well. Some will find this touching. Look away if it troubles you...