Monday, February 18, 2008

Mrs. O   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

An e-mail:

There's so much to comment on regarding that statement. Just two brief points;

1. Mrs. Obama is in her mid-forties. That means her adult life has spanned from about 1985 to the present. She's  found nothing in all that time to make her proud of her country? Not the fact that it won the Cold War and liberated tens of millions from totalitarian rule? What about sending billions to ease the plight of millions of AIDS sufferers in Africa? What about the nation's selflessness in stopping genocide in the Balkans when it had no immediate security interest in the region? What about our ability to produce hundreds of thousands of brave men and women who will risk life and limb to liberate two countries from despotic regimes right out of the Dark Ages? Doesn't the Herculean Tsunami Relief effort generate a flicker of national pride?

Of course, the list of things to make the ordinary person proud of this country is interminable. But,then, the Obamas are not ordinary. Clearly, they're extraordinary .
Krauthammer's right. The self-referential does tend to become tiresome. But Mrs. Obama's statement transcends the self-referential and shades into  the self-reverential.

2. The wife of a candidate who refuses to wear an American flag lapel pin, regularly slouches insouciantly during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner and tepidly comments that posters of Che Guevara and the Communist Cuban flag  hanging at his campaign offices are "inappropriate" might want to consider whether her remarks might feed a rather unappealing narrative regarding the degree of the Senator's, um, patriotic fervor.

btw—do they have a history department at Princeton?

02/18 05:30 PMShare