Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Obama's Mask

The video below is from the local Fox affiliate in D.C.

Eric Spiegelman, who posted this clever montage on Vimeo last week, says:

On Wednesday, the Obamas hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, during which they stood for 130 photographs with visiting foreign dignitaries in town for the UN meeting. The President has exactly the same smile in every single shot. See for yourself - the pictures are up on the State Department’s flickr (link [here]). And, of course, compressed into 20 seconds for your viewing pleasure.



This is fascinating, in a weird kind of way. The mask of facial language says something but I’m not sure I want to know the message in this here particular example.

Would someone send it to Gagdad Bob at One Cosmos and get his take on it? As a forensic psychologist, he’d have something informative to add to any speculation we might make - though do speculate all you want. The more you examine it, the stranger this one gets. I hope Mr. Cosmos will venture at least a short post on the significance -- or not -- of this fey phenomenon.

This reminds me yet again…
- - - - - - - - -
I wish Hillary had won the Democrat nomination; she’d probably have won the national vote, too.

Say what you will about her, Mrs. Clinton has a most animated visage. Just check her out on Google Images - her facial expressions are by turn thoughtful, funny, tired, delighted, outraged, sad, etc. One gets the sense that a real person inhabits her being. Not a real person that I’d ever want to cross, mind you, but she certainly is genuine in comparison to the President she serves.

I wonder how many years he spent in front of the mirror perfecting that smile. Probably more than he spent “writing” his books. Like John Kennedy’s authorship of Profiles in Courage, actually written by Ted Sorensen, Obie Wan’s autobiographical Dreams had a ghoster, too. Like Sorensen, Ayers wrote some of his own books, too (the style of which leads reasonable people to conclude he’s the author of Obie’s magnum opus). Unlike Sorensen, however, one of Ayers’ books was dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan, Bobby Kennedy's assassin.

A number of people question the President’s writing skills. Given the fact that the little available evidence of his previous writing shows a less-than-fluid style,the questioners are probably right. What would be useful is a computer analysis of the appearance of word frequency and syntax-- you know, like the ones they've done endlessly on Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.

However, while it's entertaining to expose the guy, traveling that road to definite proof would be a pyrrhic victory. The Obamaists will shrug their Gallic “So. Your point?” and move on. The moderates, that group of uncommitted voters who decide elections, don’t care. Conservative energies need to be harnessed to issues that matter, e.g., the socialist programs being rahmed down our throats.

We have a cabal of maroons leading us into a quagmire designed to destroy the middle class and the small entrepreneur. If they succeed at imposing even half their failure-based programs, the U.S. will become the North American Argentina.

Meanwhile, this public demonstration of Obama’s mask is a small entertainment to distract us as we amble on down the road of good intentions to our fatal destination.

A prediction: our raucous American humor is going to develop a Russian flavor before long. This is the kind of dark humor born of despair. Funny as hell, but as deeply dysphoric, also.

Want to hear my favorite Russian joke?


Hat tips galore to the many readers who sent this in.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, we and the Russians actually have remarkably similar senses of humor. A lot of Russian jokes I heard this summer were actually quite funny.

My personal favorite Russian joke is the following one from the Soviet era, which I heard many years ago and have never forgotten. It never ceases to amuse me.

Q: Where were you born?
A: St. Petersburg.

Q: Where did you go to school?
A: Petrograd.

Q: Where do you live now?
A: Leningrad.

Q: And where would you like to live?
A: St. Petersburg
.

Homophobic Horse said...

Isn't the meaning of his fake smile obvious? He's not actually a friendly man who enjoys politics. In fact, he may not even like you. Or anyone.

Good Russian joke btw.

Geoffrey de Bouillon said...

I learned my favorite Russian aphorism from my Ukrainian wife. It seems we are headed to the same place:

Ah, the workers paradise, where we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us!"

Gagdad Bob said...

I don't think it's that complicated. No one could live that long with Michelle Obama without having mastered the Mirthless Smile.

Dymphna said...

@Gagdad Bob--

But of course. And before that he lived with his angry Communist mother who kept abandoning him...boy, I'd love some shrink to get a little face time with that man. A real shrink, not one of those Foucault cookie-cutters.

Fat chance.