The exact nature of the content and theme of Barack Obama's official speech about the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson has been the subject of extreme speculation in the days running up to it. Would he use it to directly attack the Tea Party and Sarah Palin? No. Would he call for unity in the wake of the shootings? Yes. Would he attempt to capitalise politically on it by smearing the more vocal of his opponents and claim they were actually responsible for it and not just some lone nutter? No. The speech I think went down pretty well. He obviously highlighted on calling for national unity and an opportunity to restore debate to bringing people closer together not further and violently apart. Of course his speech focused heavily on the victims of the attack. Such as news that Gabrielle Giffords had actually opened her eyes for the first time since the attack, and then onto the less fortunate victims especially Christina Green who was born when 9/11 occurred and was sadly killed in the shooting. Now it is fairly obvious that Obama is a cool and analytically minded man with a process based legal mindset. Not counting that due to the violent nature of the crime that led to the speech would be difficult for anyone to find the right words to say - this was from a speech perspective not Obamas strongest area (and in a nation that requires a lot of emoting from a leader this has worked against him), however he pulled it off pretty well. The speech was moving and a celebration of the victims lives and the spirit of the nation, not an angry opportunity for a polemic to name names and point fingers. It never seemed either overly sentimental or forced, which is a difficult act to pull off for someone who is not a naturally emotive person. It was as fitting a tribute to the victims and to the country as could have been expected by the head of state. The same can't be said for another speech given by Sarah Palin.
Palins speech; the first one she has made on the shootings since the attack happened wasn't before a live audience but pre-recorded on her website. This makes the biggest gaffe in it totally unfathomable. But let's look at the speech itself. In contrast to Obamas, there was a much greater sense that she used her words to help her own ends into the bargain. A bit of back peddling on her behalf to distance herself from the affair. (Note she wasn't directly responsible for what happened btw) One particular example that stuck out for me was when she quoted something Ronald Reagan had said about rejecting the notion that when a law is broken, society is not at all assumed to be to blame, but the lawbreaker is, and that lawbreaking begins and ends with the lawbreaker. Whether you believe this or not, it is awfully handy to use to distance oneself from the accusations that incendiary rhetoric is fanning the flames in the minds of gunmen with an axe to grind. The speech had a much more self indulgent theme than Obamas did, his was largely an appeal to unity and a memorial to the victims. Palins seemed primarily some kind of damage limitation exercise on her behalf. But the biggest gaffe of all had to be the use of the term "blood libel" to describe the liberal medias attempts to link herself and the Tea Party (I presume that is who she meant) to the shootings. Now let us leave aside that this was supposed to have been a speech lamenting the deaths, and; oh - not about lamenting the bad PR you have been getting from it, I mean who the hell thought using the term "blood libel", a biblical phrase first used to describe the collective guilt the Jews would have to carry the can for for killing Jesus, and was then used to justify the pogroms the Jews faced at the hands of vengeful Christians, was a good idea? Did Palin (or whoever wrote the speech for her) really think that the flack she got was on a par with the victims of these purges? That the fact that Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish should have perhaps raised questions about the suitability of the analogy? That it displayed a staggeringly crass lack of perspective? You really have to ask who put this into the script, a pre recorded one at that; so it can't be dismissed as a slip of the tongue either (admittedly it would have been a very strange one as well). We really have to ask is this women actually more ignorant and gormless than we already suspected. And is it time someone so monumentally unfit for high office should perhaps shuffle off back to her day job sometime soon?
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