PrintObama and the Flippancy of Fools
Over the last 7 years of the Obama era, Barack Obama and his team have regularly responded to serious questions with flippant responses. Don’t Americans deserve better than the flippancy Obama and his top officials dish out to us?
The below compendium is just a sample (or a smidgen in Obama terminology).
When asked why his trillion-dollar stimulus produced far fewer “shovel ready jobs” than he promised to urgently promote its passage, Barack Obama laughed off the issue: “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” The laughter will be little solace for taxpayers on the hook to pay back the debt that financed that union-enriching boondoggle.
When asked about the risk of terrorism arising from his abandoning Iraq, he flippantly dismissed these concerns by comparing the resurgent Al Qaeda to a “Jayvee team” that “puts on Lakers uniforms… that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” His flippancy -- his lack of concern and interest in dealing with Islamic terrorism -- has led to the rise of what has become the richest terror group in the world.
He routinely shows the same insouciance whenever there are murders perpetrated by Muslims. When a man claiming allegiance to ISIS killed four Jews in a deli in Paris in January 2015, Obama dismissed the deliberate targeting of Jews since he said the attack was someone who just “randomly” shot “a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” The facts: the deli was Jewish, all the victims were Jewish (non-Jewish customers and employees were spared) and the murderer had said he was targeting Jews. They weren’t a bunch of random folks in a deli.
Barack Obama could not bring himself to join other world leaders to protest the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. Did the French feel they were blessed with a consolation prize of James Taylor singing during a John Kerry visit? Was that flippant? Or did the French feel they were being flipped the bird?
At least the French weren’t told to get off their high horse over Islamic extremism, as were Christians when Obama spoke to them at a National Prayer Breakfast (as my son would say, ”rude”) -- since Christians perpetrated the Crusades. That was a flippant remark to people who could rightly consider themselves potential future “random” victims since Christians are being hunted down and killed throughout the Middle East.
There can certainly be a visual form of flippancy. Barack Obama specializes in these as the below gallery will show.
Here he is, right after announcing the beheading of an American by ISIS:
Here he is at Nelson Mandela’s funeral service, taking yet another selfie:
Dec. 10, 2013: President Obama is shown taking a picture alongside Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and British Prime Minister David Cameron, in Johannesburg.
Call it the selfie seen 'round the world.
What is it about the deaths of others that put Obama in a jaunty mood?
When Obama was debating Mitt Romney he flippantly mocked Romney’s concern about a rapidly shrinking military force:
“We also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.” Obama’s flippancy also was infused with that good ole’ Obama snarkiness, so often on display by our “Snarker-in-Chief.” His flippancy was playing to the peanut gallery (his base) but the fact that Obama tried to obscure was that he has deliberately shrunk our military.
Romney also stated that Putin’s Russia was our number one geopolitical adversary. Obama dismissed this (accurate) statement by saying the 1980’s called and wanted their foreign policy back. Putin, who Obama casually characterized as akin to a bored schoolboy in the back of a room, has since gone on a rampage in the Ukraine and in Georgia while arming Iranian mullahs and the genocidal regime in Syria. Some bored schoolboy. Geopolitics cannot be dealt with by immature flippancy. Indeed, Obama’s entire style of dealing with important issues by flippant responses has probably enticed our adversaries around the world. Adversaries see silly people in charge of American policy and act accordingly.
When Tommy Vietor, van-driver turned National Security Council spokesman, was asked the whereabouts of the ever-elusive Barack Obama on the night of the Benghazi terror attack, he incredulously -- and flippantly -- answered, “Dude, this was two years ago!"
Vietor’s adolescent response was outdone by that of Hillary Clinton when she took umbrage at being questioned by Senator Ron Johnson about the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. His line of inquiry focused on the White House-concocted story of a video leading to the Benghazi attack. Her flippant response should go down in history -- if not that then at least in campaign ads next year, “What difference at this point does it make?” How dare anyone want to find out why these Americans were murdered? After all, it might spoil her run for the Oval Office. The flippancy was inexcusable.
When asked about her role in pushing for the attack on Libya and the fall of Muammar Gaddafi- -- a disastrous course of action that has spewed terrorism in the region (including the Benghazi murders) -- she cut off the line of questioning by cackling and chortling, “We came. We saw. He died.” This was not only flippant, but weird. At least when President Obama bragged that he was “really good at killing people” he did so in a private conversation at the White House.
When State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, was asked to comment on a brilliant column written by legendary former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, castigating the deal Obama was giving to the mullahs, she denigrated their work by saying, “I heard a lot of sort of big words and big thoughts in that piece…but I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives about what they would do differently.” Actually there are many alternatives to paving the way for an Iranian nuclear arsenal. The topic did not deserve to be dispensed with by a flippant “big words and big thoughts” answer.
The flippancy has spread like a virus from the top-down. This is most recently apparent when it comes to Iran, the number one terror-sponsoring nation and a regime responsible for the deaths and maiming of thousands of Americans. Barack Obama and his team are eager for a deal that will be his ObamaCare of the second term. Hubris has overcome them. John Kerry is angling for a Nobel Peace Prize and his team members want to please their boss. They will brook no opposition and, in fact, are enraged by critics of the “deal.” How do they respond? Flippantly, of course.
When critics asked why Iran will be allowed to import and export weapons since that was not part of the original deal, Kerry responded that that concession was “thrown in as an Add-On” to the Iran deal. “Thrown In” -- yes, why not ad a cherry to the top of that sundae? Kerry also disputed the view that there would be “hundreds of billions” in sanctions relief given to Iran. Kerry admonished and scolded, “Don’t exaggerate. It’s not hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s $100 billion, approximately.” So relax and pipe down, he might have added. The White House had promised the “deal” with Iran would guarantee “anytime, anywhere” inspections so Iranian cheating could be detected. This was to disarm critics until the deal was presented as a fait accompli. Wendy Sherman, one of Obama’s chief negotiators with the mullahs (since she had such success doing the same with the North Koreans years ago -- a history of failure is a job requirement for the Obama White House) was asked why the final deal did not include anytime, anywhere inspections. Her response was that those assurances given to Americans were just “rhetorical flourishes.” That sentence will be the next one to enter the Orwellian world of DC-speak.
Maybe Obama should have used that flip-line in explaining “if you like your health care plan… if you like your doctors… if you like your insurance, you can keep them” palaver in the campaign to pass Obamacare. Were those just “rhetorical flourishes”? Obama “rhetorically flourishes” quite often.
Why the flippancy towards other Americans? Why cop the attitude and show disdain and contempt for Americans? Why be so annoyed when asked about their actions?
Clearly part of the explanation lies in the adolescent mindset of Barack Obama and his “Jayvee Team of Twitting Twits” as Lauri Regan and I wrote in an earlier American Thinker column. Their reaction to questions and scrutiny is to demonstrate their innate superiority and sophistication -- at least to members of their own small circle. Flip responses are meant also to end he line of inquiry, to intimidate. Should we be surprised that Barack Obama so often shows up on the comedian Jon Stewart’s Daily Show? Stewart is a master of flippancy and Obama has privately worked to turn Stewart into an ally to sell his policies to America. Flippancy is no substitute for policy and should not be used to shield officials from responsibility for their failures.
We may laugh at flippancy from a comedian but we deserve better from our nation’s leadership.
