Now, obviously I don’t mean that and you should know that I’m simply substituting President Obama’s name into that sentence, if you’ve watched the recent news media coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner. But what does this have to do with President Obama? Everything.

Recently, at the White House Correspondents Dinner the President hosted, a celebrity (Wanda Sykes) made the same statement about Rush Limbaugh and, once she made it, President Obama and many others in the room all continued to laugh and smile at the joke, even though it caused viewers substantial discomfort. Here is the story and some good commentary by Michael Gerson:

The Rhetoric of the Rant
by Michael Gerson at Townhall.com

The first response to the performer on a public stage wishing the death of a stranger for political reasons was discomfort. Wanda Sykes had “crossed a line” at the White House Correspondents Dinner in accusing Rush Limbaugh of terrorism and treason, mocking his past drug addiction and wishing his kidneys would fail. But a counterreaction soon developed: Humor is often transgressive, and if you can’t take it, don’t dish it, and let’s everyone lighten up a bit, and can’t anyone take a joke anymore?

The initial reaction was more human.

Sykes’ defenders found her pungency unexceptional, which is true. It represents a whole genre of political discourse: the rhetoric of the rant. This approach recently introduced the “c” word into the national debate on gay marriage. It leads some spotlight-chasing conservatives to attack opponents as “traitors” and to employ racist epithets. It is the dominant form of public comment on the Internet, where the pithy, personal, scatological attack has become a minor art form, rather like sculpting in excrement.

What I’m describing is not the blunt earthiness of the farmer or the unguarded political overstatement among friends. It is a practiced form of verbal aggression, combining harshness and coarseness to shock and intimidate.

The practitioners of the rant have their own television shows, radio programs and Web sites. And now it seems they will have their own elected representative, the author of “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.” Al Franken has made a career of such rants, asking “Isn’t Cardinal O’Connor an a..hole?” calling opponents “human filth” and suggesting that his next book might bear the title: “I F…ing Hate Those Right-Wing Mother F……!” Which many Minnesotans apparently found refreshing.

The advocates of this approach often describe it (and themselves) as courageous. Franken explains, “My dad did say, ‘If you stand up to bullies they usually back down.'” But those who make their living beating up others for their lunch money must eventually be categorized as bullies themselves. They take perhaps the commonest human vice — self-indulgent anger — and cloak it as a rare virtue. But it is a strange moral inversion to talk of the “courage” of the upraised middle finger. Perhaps adolescent rudeness. Maybe boorishness. Not courage, which involves standing up for a belief, not dehumanizing those who don’t share it.

America doesn’t need another scolding lecture on the importance of civility. Well, apparently it does. So here goes.

[Continue Reading…]

Below is an excerpt from a fascinating article on General Electric’s plans to profit from President Obama’s healthcare reform, assuming it is passed and conforms to Tom Daschle’s standards. The article was written by Andrew Wilkow and Nick Rizzuto for The Washington Times:

For all of the carping liberals did for eight years about the corporate cronyism in George W. Bush’s White House, they seem to turn a blind eye to the same behavior in President Obama’s. With plans in place for a major overhaul in the health-care industry, General Electric is positioning itself to become a major beneficiary of these health care reforms.

Recently at the Business and Social Responsibility Conference, General Electric Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt referred to America’s current economic crisis as part of a “reset” rather than part of an economic cycle, saying, “People who understand that will prosper in the future, and people who don’t understand that will get left behind.”

In the same address, Mr. Immelt, who is also a member of Mr. Obama’s economic recovery advisory board, added, “The intersection of government and business will be changed, maybe for a generation.” In other words, companies should be prepared to beg for a seat at the government’s table if they plan on remaining lucrative.

…

Mr. Immelt’s words betray GE’s willingness to partner with the Obama government in order to turn a profit. To this end, GE has appointed Mr. Obama’s former nominee for secretary of health and human services, Tom Daschle, to the board of advisers for Healthymagination, an initiative launched by General Electric in partnership along with Intel, which will invest $6 billion over the next six years on “health care innovation that will help deliver better care to more people at lower cost.”

Mr. Daschle said, “We can only find real solutions in health care when business, government and their partners work together.”

In 2008, Mr. Daschle wrote the book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis” in which he explains his radical solutions to the problems in American health care. In the book, Mr. Daschle calls for a British-style Federal Council on health care.

The profitability of GE’s new venture will depend heavily on the nationalization of the health care industry. The standardization and streamlining of health care recordkeeping, something on which Mr. Obama ran in 2008, would require a massive government contract for the technology to achieve such standardization.

[Read the whole article]