RUSH: This is an Associated Press profile of “Barack Hussein Obama! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!” It’s by a guy named Jerry Schwartz of the Administration Press, otherwise known as the AP. I want to read some of this to you. This is unbelievable.
“Nearly four years after Barack Obama was elected to the most powerful office in the most powerful country in the world, the question remains: Who is he?” That’s the lede.
From the Associated Press, who’s done everything they can do to keep us from knowing who he is. The LA Times still will not release that video of Obama at a yuk-yuk meeting with Khalid Rashidy or Rashid Kahlili, whatever, the big pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel anti-Semite. The LA Times has a video of Obama praising this guy, and they won’t release it. Yeah, Obama’s new ideas to attack the private sector. There is no advantage in the tax code for moving jobs overseas. In fact the truth is exactly the opposite. So he’s got this new job plan pamphlet promising to remove a tax deduction that doesn’t exist. And the purpose of this is to once again attack the private sector, make it look like he’s improving something, attack the private sector lying about the tax code. I don’t know how else to say it.
But this AP profile, remember, now, this is four years later. Nearly four years after Obama was elected, the question remains: who is he? “He seemed to come out of nowhere. He had served seven years in the Illinois Senate, and less than four years in the U.S. Senate — a meager political resume, augmented by a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His was an exotic story, at least by the standards of the 42 white men who preceded him in office. Son of a black African and white Kansan, born in Hawaii, raised there and in Indonesia, he was something new, and America seemed ready for him. He won almost 9.5 million votes more than John McCain.
“And yet, ‘there was the feeling that we knew less than we needed to know’ about our new president, says Janny Scott, author of ‘A Singular Woman,’ a biography of Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother. ‘He didn’t fit a comfortable template.’ Four years have passed. We have watched Obama as commander in chief, waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and we have seen him accept the Nobel Peace Prize. We have seen him grapple with a dismal economy and a relentless opposition. We have been spectators to a grueling fight over health care from which he emerged victorious — if only just barely. All of this in the glare of a fierce and unyielding media spotlight. By now, we should have a fix on the man who is asking for a second term. But still we ask: Who is Barack Obama?”
I don’t know how to calmly react to this. I’m trying to concoct an analogy here. This is the Associated Press, which did everything to create this false image of Obama, did everything they could to create this magical new arrival, unseen in American politics before. He was going to lower the sea levels. He was going to restore love and trust for the United States all over the world. He was going to create new energy sources that would not pollute the skies or the water or the land. We would have new sources of food. We would have no enemies anymore. Everybody would love everybody else. Republicans and Democrats would link arms, sing kumbaya, and everything would be lovely because everybody would get along.
This is the myth that they presented. At least Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw had the temerity to do this two days before the election the first time around. (imitating Rose and Brokaw) “I don’t know who he is, Charlie. I don’t know what books he’s read. I don’t know who informs him on foreign policy. We just don’t know, Charlie. And who is this man? We don’t know, Charlie.” And then Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas of Newsweek, (imitating Meacham and Thomas) “He’s creepy, you know, this guy at Grant Park, why, he’s above us. He’s standing up there watching us watch him. Very creepy.”
Four years into the destruction of the United States economy and the AP says, “Who is he?” Golly. Golly. And they’re serious. How does this get past an editor? What world do these people live in? Do they not recall that every effort to get to know Obama was laughed at, impugned? Every one of us who sought to inform people who Obama is — and he is knowable. We know who Obama is. I clearly knew enough about Obama to say two weeks before he was inaugurated “I hope he fails.” He’s gone from being a blank slate to an angry stare.
I just don’t know how you do this. Every one of us who attempted to tell the American people who Barack Obama really was, we were attacked, we were ridiculed, we were called racists. We were called all of these names: Racist, sexist basket homophobe, whatever. Any effort — any effort — to find out who Obama was was racist. Any effort to tell people who Obama was was labeled as racist.
Now here we are two weeks to the day from the 2012 election and the AP has a profile which isn’t a profile. It’s a profile that says, “Who is the guy?” It’s your job to tell us who he is! Their job four years ago was to vet him, to find out who he is. Tell us everything there is about him: His college transcripts, how he got into college, where he went to college, what his grades were.
How did he get to be the head honcho of law review without ever writing anything? But any effort to uncover even this was met with ridicule by the very AP who today asks: “Who is he?” in a profile. By the way, does this…? You know, there are people, ladies and gentlemen, who do not listen or watch what I will here call “partisan media.” They don’t watch Fox. They don’t listen to talk radio. They don’t much PMSNBC.
They just watch the network evening news and they read the newspapers. Now, the newspapers is where you find AP stories, and there are going to be these people who only know the AP and the three networks and their nightly news who are gonna read this. How does this help Obama? How does the AP running a profile on “Who is he?” after four years help? How does that help him? We know the AP isn’t for Romney.