December 22, 2012

Obama's eulogy for Obama at Sen. Inouye's funeral

Here's the video and transcript of President Obama's eulogy for Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), the Japanese-American war hero of the Fighting 442nd. 

If you were in a hurry to compose a eulogy of Inouye, you could do worse than just crib Wikipedia's account of Inouye's WWII service:
In 1943, when the U.S. Army dropped its enlistment ban on Japanese Americans, Inouye curtailed his premedical studies at the University of Hawaii and enlisted in the Army.[6] He volunteered to be part of the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team.[7] This army unit was mostly made up of second-generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland.[8] 
Inouye was promoted to the rank of sergeant within his first year, and he was given the role of platoon leader. He served in Italy in 1944 during the Rome-Arno Campaign before his regiment was transferred to the Vosges Mountains region of France, where he spent two weeks in the battle to relieve the Lost Battalion, a battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment that was surrounded by German forces. He was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant for his actions there. At one point while he was leading an attack, a shot struck him in the chest directly above his heart, but the bullet was stopped by the two silver dollars he happened to have stacked in his shirt pocket.[9] He continued to carry the coins throughout the war in his shirt pocket as good luck charms until he lost them shortly before the battle in which he lost his arm.[10] 
On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily-defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany, Italy called Colle Musatello. The ridge served as a strongpoint along the strip of German fortifications known as the Gothic Line, which represented the last and most unyielding line of German defensive works in Italy. As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver, three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions just 40 yards away, pinning his men to the ground. Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach; ignoring his wound, he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenades and fire from his Thompson submachine gun. After being informed of the severity of his wound by his platoon sergeant, he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position, which he also successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss.[citation needed] 
As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, Inouye crawled toward the final bunker, eventually drawing within 10 yards. As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade into the fighting position, a German inside the bunker fired a rifle grenade that struck him on the right elbow, severing most of his arm and leaving his own primed grenade reflexively "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore".[11] Inouye's horrified soldiers moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. While the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle, Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left. As the German aimed his rifle to finish him off, Inouye tossed the grenade into the bunker and destroyed it. He stumbled to his feet and continued forward, silencing the last German resistance with a one-handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge. When he awoke to see the concerned men of his platoon hovering over him, his only comment before being carried away was to gruffly order them to return to their positions, since, as he pointed out, "nobody called off the war!"[12] 
The remainder of Inouye's mutilated right arm was later amputated at a field hospital without proper anesthesia, as he had been given too much morphine at an aid station and it was feared any more would lower his blood pressure enough to kill him.[13] 

Wow.

But, to Obama, that's kind of boring compared to the really important thing about Inouye: that the young Barack Obama noticed him.
To Irene, Ken, Jennifer, Danny's friends and former colleagues, it is an extraordinary honor to be here with you in this magnificent place to pay tribute to a man who would probably we wondering what all the fuss is about.
This Tuesday was in many ways a day like any other.  The sun rose; the sun set; the great work of our democracy carried on.  But in a fundamental sense it was different.  It was the first day in many of our lives -- certainly my own -- that the halls of the United States Congress were not graced by the presence of Daniel Ken Inouye.
Danny was elected to the U.S. Senate when I was two years old.  He had been elected to Congress a couple of years before I was born.  He would remain my senator until I left Hawaii for college. 
Now, even though my mother and grandparents took great pride that they had voted for him, I confess that I wasn't paying much attention to the United States Senate at the age of four or five or six.  It wasn't until I was 11 years old that I recall even learning what a U.S. senator was, or it registering, at least.  It was during my summer vacation with my family -- my first trip to what those of us in Hawaii call the Mainland. 
So we flew over the ocean, and with my mother and my grandmother and my sister, who at the time was two, we traveled around the country.  It was a big trip.  We went to Seattle, and we went to Disneyland -- which was most important.  We traveled to Kansas where my grandmother's family was from, and went to Chicago, and went to Yellowstone.  And we took Greyhound buses most of the time, and we rented cars, and we would stay at local motels or Howard Johnson's.  And if there was a pool at one of these motels, even if it was just tiny, I would be very excited. And the ice machine was exciting -- and the vending machine, I was really excited about that. 
But this is at a time when you didn’t have 600 stations and 24 hours' worth of cartoons.  And so at night, if the TV was on, it was what your parents decided to watch.  And my mother that summer would turn on the TV every night during this vacation and watch the Watergate hearings.  And I can't say that I understood everything that was being discussed, but I knew the issues were important.  I knew they spoke to some basic way about who we were and who we might be as Americans. 
And so, slowly, during the course of this trip, which lasted about a month, some of this seeped into my head.  And the person who fascinated me most was this man of Japanese descent with one arm, speaking in this courtly baritone, full of dignity and grace.  And maybe he captivated my attention because my mom explained that this was our senator and that he was upholding what our government was all about.  Maybe it was a boyhood fascination with the story of how he had lost his arm in a war.  But I think it was more than that. 
Now, here I was, a young boy with a white mom, a black father, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.  And I was beginning to sense how fitting into the world might not be as simple as it might seem.  And so to see this man, this senator, this powerful, accomplished person who wasn't out of central casting when it came to what you'd think a senator might look like at the time, and the way he commanded the respect of an entire nation I think it hinted to me what might be possible in my own life. 
This was a man who as a teenager stepped up to serve his country even after his fellow Japanese Americans were declared enemy aliens; a man who believed in America even when its government didn't necessarily believe in him.  That meant something to me.  It gave me a powerful sense -- one that I couldn’t put into words -- a powerful sense of hope.
And as I watched those hearings, listening to Danny ask all those piercing questions night after night, I learned something else.  I learned how our democracy was supposed to work, our government of and by and for the people; that we had a system of government where nobody is above the law, where we have an obligation to hold each other accountable, from the average citizen to the most powerful of leaders, because these things that we stand for, these ideals that we hold dear are bigger than any one person or party or politician. 
And, somehow, nobody communicated that more effectively than Danny Inouye.  You got a sense, as Joe mentioned, of just a fundamental integrity; that he was a proud Democrat, but most importantly, he was a proud American.  And were it not for those two insights planted in my head at the age of 11, in between Disneyland and a trip to Yellowstone, I might never have considered a career in public service.  I might not be standing here today. 
I think it's fair to say that Danny Inouye was perhaps my earliest political inspiration.  And then, for me to have the privilege of serving with him, to be elected to the United States Senate and arrive, and one of my first visits is to go to his office, and for him to greet me as a colleague, and treat me with the same respect that he treated everybody he met, and to sit me down and give me advice about how the Senate worked and then regale me with some stories about wartime and his recovery -- stories full of humor, never bitterness, never boastfulness,  just matter-of-fact -- some of them I must admit a little off-color.  I couldn’t probably repeat them in the cathedral.  (Laughter.)  There’s a side of Danny that -- well. 
Danny once told his son his service to this country had been for the children, or all the sons and daughters who deserved to grow up in a nation that never questioned their patriotism.  This is my country, he said.  Many of us have fought hard for the right to say that.  And, obviously, Rick Shinseki described what it meant for Japanese Americans, but my point is, is that when he referred to our sons and daughters he wasn’t just talking about Japanese Americans.  He was talking about all of us.  He was talking about those who serve today who might have been excluded in the past.  He’s talking about me. ...

And isn't everybody, when you stop and really think about it, talking about, in the final analysis, me? I mean, I'm up here supposedly yammering on about this old coot, but aren't we all really thinking of me? And by "me" I'm not making a point about human nature in general. I don't mean you thinking of "yourself." I mean, you are thinking about me, Barack Obama, the P-O-T-U-S.

I know I am.

Seriously, I (SES, not SES as BHO) have noticed in myself in recent years a growth in the same urge that Obama has to wax nostalgic about our younger years. My younger years weren't all that different from Obama's -- same later baby boomer generation and same SoCal-Hawaii beach bubble. Most notably, both our lives were pleasantly lacking in incident.

For example, my recent string of articles on the Sixties often have their origin with killer personal anecdotes -- e.g., Hey, remember in 1965 when a girl shouted, "Look, a Beatle" but it was actually Herman of the Hermits? Hey, remember in 1967 when my parents took me to see the hippies? -- that turn out to be less intriguing that I thought they would be when I finally put them down in words. (Granted, they are slightly more interesting than Obama's reminiscences in a packed Cathedral about the motel ice machine, but, still ...) So, I wind up concocting some giant theory to justify recounting my musty Baby Boomer memories as semi-relevant illustrations of some vast but heretofore mysterious historical trend.

But Obama has always been a middle-aged bore about his past. At about age 30, he got a six-figure advance to write a book about law and race, then turned it into an autobiography that didn't sell because his life was so lacking in Inouye-like interest, only to later have his narcissism vindicated when it turned out that the world-historical event his life story illustrated was his life story, just as he'd alway kind of figured.

***
By the way, Obama was recycling his motel ice machine spiel from a speech he gave last summer to show what a down-to-earth regular American he is, unlike that out-of-touch Mitt Romney. He followed up by drinking a beer. From the NY Daily News:
As Mitt Romney continued a family getaway at his multi-million dollar New Hampshire compound on Friday, President Obama recalled riding on Greyhound buses and staying at Howard Johnson hotels on his own childhood vacations. 
During a campaign rally in Ohio, Obama said that as a child he was excited just to play with the ice machine and swim in the hotel pool. “It didn’t matter how big it was,” Obama said.

47 comments:

DCS said...

One of the best examples of Obama's narcissism I've ever seen. The man is truly incredible.

Harry Baldwin said...

Incredible. Shameless. And so, so banal. Was this stream of consciousness, or did he actually write it out, have a chance to review it and consider how solipsistic it was, but conclude, "Dammit, this is good, really good"?

I love this section:

"This was a man who as a teenager stepped up to serve his country even after his fellow Japanese Americans were declared enemy aliens; a man who believed in America even when its government didn't necessarily believe in him. That meant something to me."

And so I enlisted in the military to serve my country. No, that wasn't it. I thought, "Hey, I could be famous like that guy too!"

Anonymous said...

People do tend to talk about how the dead affected *them*. But sure, he probably didn't even read the man's bio. Perhaps Bill Clinton would have done that out of (a desire to portray?) genuine curiosity+respect.

Anonymous said...

Obama's narcissism is fed by his minion's starcissism.

If some people are into themselves, other feed on OTHER people's narcissism than on their own. They gaze up at others as stars or something.
This is why so many dweeby white liberal boys worship Obama's narcissism. Though not exactly narcissistic themselves, they admire the narcissism of an Obama(or an Oprah).

Without starcissists, narcissists would be lonely and ridiculed figures. But as long as there are starcissists to feed off on the narcissism of others, we have phenoms like Obama. Our entire celebrity culture is like that.

Tarantino is a starcissist who creates narcissist on his own heroes to worship.

jody said...

Aren't you being a bit harsh on the current & present Obama? His eulogy was about the meaning of Inouye to him (the President!) and to the nation. That's not bad form.

Kylie said...

I never realized that Daniel Inouye served in WWII so heroically and in the Senate so illustriously just so he could influence a young man named Barack Hussein Obama.

I guess "Danny" didn't realize it, either, or he would have asked the docs to take his other arm, too, just to make sure young Barack was properly impressed.

Jason Sylvester said...

In thirteen (shortish) paragraphs of tribute to the recently deceased, I count 27 uses of the pronoun "I" and 21 uses of either "my" or "me" in the sense of "something either belonging to or intrinsically about yours truly" ("my summer vacation...my first trip...").

The guy seems to have his favorite person ever at the forefront of his mind, even on occasions that might tempt him to shift his devout attentions elsewhere...

Kylie said...

"Seriously, I've noticed in myself in recent years a growth in the same tendency that Obama has to wax nostalgic about our younger years."

With you, that's just part of getting older. With Obama, it's the habit of a lifetime.

Also, go ahead and wax away, you're endlessly fascinating whereas Obama is terminally dull.

Anonymous said...

"His eulogy was about the meaning of Inouye to him (the President!) and to the nation."

"Dreams from my yellow fellow."

Anonymous said...

Wow, what a great speech. Nothing to see here folks. Move on...

Anonymous said...

It's like Tree of Life. Universe existed just so I could make this greatest movie of all time.

Obama's Dream of Life. American history existed just to lead to me, me, me.
Obama is like one-man-boomer-narcissism machine.

Boomers thought theirs was the final frontier and last generation, that they were gonna be forever young, and etc. So, we hear boomer this, boomer that, boomer, boomer, boomer.
Well, we now have Oboomer.

Anonymous said...

If I were Lautenberg, I wouldn't sign a DNR, until Barry is out of Office.

Anonymous said...

Inouye was eventually awarded the medal of honor for his actions. A very curious thing -- he lost his memory of what happened after he was wounded. When they informed him of what he'd done he was astonished:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MCHjb50S20&

Kylie said...

"Inouye was eventually awarded the medal of honor for his actions. A very curious thing -- he lost his memory of what happened after he was wounded. When they informed him of what he'd done he was astonished."

So what effect did that have on Obama?

Daniel C. said...

Obama is the result of the irrational push by society that has been growing at least since the 60s to depict blacks as perfect beings whom can do no wrong. They are all winners, regardless of how much they screw up, and every screwup is due to an external cause- poverty! dysfunctional community! legacy of slavery! and the biggest and root cause of it all- the white man! As long as they don't commit a serious crime, they don't have to have above a bare minimum of ability to get a job ahead of people who are much more talented.

This leads to narcissism in kids, as they grow up with unrealistic ideas, thinking they are far more talented and bright then they actually are. Chalk one more up for liberals screwing up blacks with their road paved with good intentions.

Velan said...

Not to insult true heroism, but one has to wonder just how much of this is real, and how much is tall tale built up over the years? I'm sure a little embellishment couldn't hurt his political aspirations. In any case, if he lost his arm in combat, that alone is worth respect.

James Walker said...

If there were ever a man about whose career it could be said, "You didn't build that," that man would be Obama.

I used to think the narcissism was to mask his deep insecurities, which were and still are numerous. But Sailer points out that the script of "Dreams" is being played out by O in real-time.
Barry knows how to manipulate people, I will give him that. But he betrays himself constantly.

His contempt for others shows in his inappropriate touching of others' shoulders at public appearances to show he is the alpha, or at least trying to be.

It also shows when he refers to people he ostensibly admires, like Sen. Inouye, as "Danny." When he references vending and ice machines in Midwestern hotels during a solemn ceremony for a senator from O's home state, you know some wire has gotten badly crossed.

Read the WSJ today re: budget matters and see how contemptuously he treated Boehner. None of this bodes well for O's next four years.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/wsj-obama-threatened-boehner-that-hell-use-inauguration-sotu-speches-to-blame-gop/article/2516688#.UNZl1SCa98E

Anonymous said...

"I used to think the narcissism was to mask his deep insecurities.."

I don't think it's that, I think it's just him being black.

Auntie Analogue said...

Before he was nominated for candidacy prior to his first term Obama impressed me as being just another flannel-mouthed bullshit artist big shot. How is it that so many of us are favorably impressed by windbags?

Senator Inouye was an extraordinarily brave infantryman whose heroism cost him dearly, but in politics he, too, had his ample share of windbag moments, and yet, unlike Obama, Senator Inouye seemed seldom to abuse the privilege.

James Walker said...

@Auntie Anologue:

Inouye was a windbag, and a pork-barrel king, but as you point out, he was a war hero and earned the right to be both.

O has earned nothing in life but knows how to pull the levers of race to get where he wants to go.

James Taranto of the WSJ concludes that Barry was bitter at Romney and other high achievers because he knew that they had achieved something and that he really had not.

It's as if Barry were honored on the podium with a Horatio Alger award through manipulation of the process and then complained about the other guys there who founded substantive enterprises: Home Depot, Wendy's, etc. Taranto seems to be saying it's mostly jealousy.

See "Explaining Obama's Ressentiment"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444330904577537003820291084.html





rob said...

Anonymous said...
It's like Tree of Life. Universe existed just so I could make this greatest movie of all time.


Why'd you stop writing titles in ALL CAPS? Bit harder to spot you now.

Anonymous said...

Obama's basic theme = how the Senator ("Danny") inspired me

what a gracious eulogy theme would have been = the Senator led an heroic, honorable, inspirational life

gumm said...

not eulogy but melogy.

Anonymous said...

Isn't it amazing how Obama can take the death of another guy and make it all about him? His ego and narcicissim know no bounds.

Anonymous said...

"A very curious thing -- he lost his memory of what happened after he was wounded."

And Obama remembers things he didn't even do.

be like priss said...

Do you suppose obamerals have kept up the birth certificate controversy to maintain the mythic aura around Obama's origins?

Jesus was also shrouded in a mythic/mysterious controversy about His miraculous birth(to a virgin mother).

So, it could be that conservatives fell into a trap. They both got ridiculed for birtherism AND helped fuel the magical mystery around Obama's birth.

BrokenSymmetry said...

One should formulate a Strong Anthropic Principle V2.0 where the universe is conducive to the rise of conscious beings so that BHO could be twice elected POTUS. The research budgets of now redundant cosmology departments can be slashed and the funds re-allocated for another monumental statue in 2016 to commemorate the Golden Age of the previous 8 years. Win-win.

Sword said...

Take-home message:

No matter in which army they serve, Japanese soldiers are *not* giver-uppers. Holy crap.

Saw it on the most recent World Championship final in Women´s soccer - USA seemed better, but the Japanese did one of the most heroic comebacks in sports that I have ever seen.

The only thing that stops people from that nation are nukes, and you need two of those at that.

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

Have to agree with jody on this one. It is the minister's job to give the "wiki synopsis" of the deceased's life. Others who deliver eulogies, or as we say in the south, "speak over the body", usually tell anecdotes involving personal experiences with the deceased as wee as ways that the deceased had affected/ inspired/ motivated them etc.
Unfortunately, Inouye probably had no contemporaries left to wax eloquently on his WWII heroics.....but aside from being dead, it is pretty cool to have a sitting POTUS (no matter who you are and whether or not you like him) deliver your eulogy.
Could Obama have done better?Sure. Did he deliver it in his typical narcissistic tone? Sure.was he way out of line? I don't think so...

Kylie said...

"Others who deliver eulogies, or as we say in the south, 'speak over the body', usually tell anecdotes involving personal experiences with the deceased as wee as ways that the deceased had affected/ inspired/ motivated them etc."

Yes, but the emphasis is supposed to be on the deceased, not on the speaker. Obama went into more detail about his childhood vacation than he did about Inouye's heroic service and honorable life.

A eulogy that mentions how exciting ice machines in a motel were to the speaker when he was an 11 y/o? That's got to be a first.

Anonymous said...

At a recent funeral, I noted that everyone who stood up and memorialized the decedent in effect spoke about themselves.

To do so is not particularly narcissistic, just average. The occasion called for speaking off the cuff. Everyone knows that the president is not eloquent. Your bile against the president is unattractive.

Mr. Anon said...

I knew that Inouye was a war hero, but I had no idea that he was such an Audie-Murphy like badass. Sounds like he should have got the Congressional Medal of Honor, which - had he not been japanese, I suppose he might have got.

Midgardian said...

Tiny bubbles in the wine, makes him happy, makes him feel fine.

Anonymous said...

Peri Brown meets Doctor Who (6) for the first time

The man who saves the Earth form evil aliens comments"

Threes Is in one sentence? One would think you were an egotistical young lady."

Or Skip Bayliss.

Or even Barack O.

Kylie said...

"At a recent funeral, I noted that everyone who stood up and memorialized the decedent in effect spoke about themselves."

We're not talking type here but degree.

"To do so is not particularly narcissistic, just average."

I'm sure it was, in the case of the funeral you attended. But the excruciating detail Obama went into about his childhood vacation--an event which had only the most tenuous connection with the deceased, whom he was supposed to be eulogizing--was noteworthy.

"The occasion called for speaking off the cuff."

If you mean the funeral you attended, I'll take your word for it. But surely you don't mean you think Obama spoke off-the-cuff at Sen. Inouye's funeral.

"Everyone knows that the president is not eloquent."

Really? We've told the exact opposite for the past few years now.

"Your bile against the president is unattractive."

Not nearly so unattractive as the president's own bile against whites.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Hmm. That dopey, meandering, cliche-ridden eulogy ought to put to rest O's reputation as a modern Cicero. It's like a scene out of an old B movie when the handsome lead spouts his final dramatic repartee at the villain but it sounds like something the producer's nephew might have worked up--for this we need an Ivy League speechwriting team? Keep that transcript warm in the bookmarks... "Hey Barack, how's Disneyland these days? Still good?"

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

An 9:12-- The occasion called for speaking off the cuff. Everyone knows that the president is not eloquent. Your bile against the president is unattractive

No, it's the soft bigotry of above-average expectations

Rev. Right said...

Not only was the eulogy delivered by Obama at Inouye's funeral yet another nauseating example of his revereance for himself, it was also complete bullshit. Via Jack Cashill:

Obama's oration dealt to a large degree with how he came to understand what a U.S. senator is. "Now, even though my mother and grandparents took great pride that they had voted for him," said Barack Obama of Inouye, "I confess that I wasn't paying much attention to the United States Senate at the age of four or five or six. It wasn't until I was 11 years old that I recall even learning what a U.S. senator was, or it registering, at least. It was during my summer vacation with my family -- my first trip to what those of us in Hawaii call the Mainland."

The story of the trip set up the punch line. He told Inouye's mourners that "my mother that summer would turn on the TV every night during this vacation and watch the Watergate hearings," and he was forced to watch, too. Of course, the senator who "fascinated" him most was "this man of Japanese descent with one arm, speaking in this courtly baritone, full of dignity and grace."

This story would work only if Obama had toured the United States during the summer of the Watergate hearings, 1973, when he was eleven years old going on twelve, but in his memoir Dreams from My Father, he tells another story -- a much more specific one. Yes, he made the same trip, but he did so "during the summer after my father's visit to Hawaii, before my eleventh birthday." This would have been 1972, when Watergate was still a third-rate burglary that had gotten little media traction.

In Dreams, Obama mentioned a Kansas City stop along the way, and Madelyn's youngest brother in suburban KC would later provide photographic evidence of the same. He confirmed the year as 1972. This disparity did not stop Obama from relating in Dreams how in that elusive summer he "watched the Watergate hearings every night before going to bed." There was no mention of Senator Inouye. He was apparently trying to make some other point.



There is absolutely nothing real about this man's past.

Anonymous said...

He's a prickly-skinned, narcissistic jerk. He can't be gracious unless the conversation is about himself.
------------------------------

Pretty describes every rich person I've ever met.

Don't hate the race (if that's what you're doing), hate the class.
_____________________________

I don't know that many uber rich, but I'd not say the few I know are narcissists at all.

Hate the class? Bubba, I hate the middle class, of which I am a part, for voting for this wind bag and I hate the media elite for seeing to it that his warts don't make the 6 o'clock news. I feel contempt for half of my countrymen.

If you're a thug or a moocher, I despise you, whatever your race.

Marc B said...

I came to the same conclusion after inspecting the .pdf of his long-form birth certificate. It was such an obvious fake that that it had be created just to drive the skeptics crazy while knowing the MSM and establishment would continue to cover for him, which would make his detractors sound even more wing-nutty.

Matthew said...

Of all the egocentric speeches I've seen Obama give, this was the worst. He's reelected. It's the classic second term slump. Now he's not even trying.

Kylie said...

"Of all the egocentric speeches I've seen Obama give, this was the worst."

It would seem to be impossible to top but I bet he manages that before he's through.

"He's reelected. It's the classic second term slump."

No, he's just showing his true color[s].

"Now he's not even trying."

I wouldn't say that. I find him every bit as trying as before.

Anonymous said...

"During a campaign rally in Ohio, Obama said that as a child he was excited just to play with the ice machine and swim in the hotel pool. “It didn’t matter how big it was,” Obama said."

Well, well, he sho has changed cuz now everything he wants has to be bigger and biggest.

From 'grew up in log cabin' myth to 'hotel swimming pool' myth.

I guess water is like baptismal image.

Anonymous said...

Obama can make anything into something about him. Extreme narcissism or over-compensated inferiority complex?

Chris said...

I think this was more of a botched speech than anything else. It's true that it's appropriate for a speaker at a funeral to say how the dead affected him. However, ideally this should be in a way brings to mind some quality of the dead person for the attendees of the funeral, or in a way that reveals an admirable quality of the dead unknown to most attendees.

In this case, it seems apparent that the speech Obama had in his head was to create a story of a future president's trip across the US, every day spanning more of the country while every night learning about its democracy from Inouye. It's not a bad story, but Obama mangled it by his anecdotes about ice machines and by then losing the narrative.

There's some narcissism here, but equally there's Obama's lack of skill at speechifying. I've never understood my leftist friends who think Obama is a great speaker. The speech Obama tried to give is one that Reagan would have nailed.

Obama would have given a better speech if he had stuck to telling about interacting with Inouye in the Senate. He could have told a story that actually centered on Inouye and yet revealed how Inouye had influenced Obama. Of course, maybe that never happened because maybe Obama has never really had the humility to be influenced by his colleagues in that way...

Not to insult true heroism, but one has to wonder just how much of this is real

Raising that sort of question is an insult to true heroism. As another writer mentions, Inouye was a windbag as a senator but a true war hero. If you have doubts about famous decorated veterans, you should investigate them for yourself rather than raising questions in this manner.

Anonymous said...

I am surprised the United States lasted so long without Obama being around. Oh but wait, he is Abe Lincoln reincarnated. America will curse the day he became president if they haven't already.

Anonymous said...

Wow, this board is full of Obama haters for sure.

Note, Obama mentioned himself (including his perhaps overly embellished story of his childhood trip) about 55 times. Note that several of the I's and me's are him quoting other people - usually Senator Inouye (in fact 4 of those I's are from a direct Inouye quote). Whereas he refers to the Senator over 70 times (perhaps more - I did only a rough count).

It is easy to take any words and twist them negatively. Politics do not belong in this discussion.

If you listen to the eulogy with an open mind you will find a deeply personal story of inspiration and a meaningful tribute.