'Hey! Look at me!' By Joe Fitzgerald

'Hey! Look at me!' By Joe Fitzgerald

It's somewhat ironic that at the renewed height of sensitivity over the symbolism of the Confederate flag, the president, who chooses his words like a housewife choosing tomatoes, gratuitously utters the word no one else in public life would dare to utter.
He certainly didn't have to employ it to make his point that racism goes much deeper that "saying the N-word," which he, in fact, said; it was clearly a calculated comment, a cheap exploitation of his bully pulpit.

His point would have been just as well-served without it.

As he rounds third and heads for home in the twilight of his presidency, it's a shame Barack Obama has fallen so short of all he could have been that he's now reduced to classless moments like these: "Hey, look at me! I'm the president and I just said what none of you can say."

Grow up, Mr. President. If none of us ought to say it, neither should you.

Back when he was still a candidate, long before the arrogance of incumbency set it, he showed signs of bringing to Washington a presence that even his detractors would have appreciated. Just by being who he was, he could have said things that needed to be said because life had given him the credentials to say them.

Down in Alabama, speaking at a commemoration of the Voting Rights Act, candidate Obama waded into a thorny topic that transcends politics.

"We have too many children in poverty in this country and don't tell me it doesn't have a little to do with the fact that we've got too many daddies not acting like daddies," he said. "Don't think fatherhood ends at conception. I know something about that because my father wasn't around when I was young. I know what it means when you don't have a strong male figure in the house."

Afghanistan? Iraq? The economy? National security? Foreign trade? Immigration? Education?

They were all important issues in that campaign, thoroughly explored in stump speeches and debates, but it's hard to recall a single comment by any candidate that had the power to touch hearts more than what Obama told that Alabama audience.

The New Deal? The Great Society?

What might have described the Obama presidency if he had zeroed in on domestic issues no one is comfortable discussing?

As the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier lamented, "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.' "

Indeed. Instead he uses the N-word to get our attention.

How pathetic.

http://www.gopusa.com/freshink/2015/06/24/hey-look-at-me/?current=1