Oh media, oh media… why must you fail us?
The media strikes again. Obama shakes hands with Chavez! Run to the presses! Extra, extra, hear all about it! What was he THINKING, that socialist, dictator-loving bastard?
Alright, now to be completely serious (who, me?). Some of these news pieces and commentaries I am seeing and reading on the whole President Obama shaking hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez instance are just frustratingly idiotic.
Yes, Chavez is one crazy dude, one scary dude. Yes, Chavez has been more than a little critical of the United States (saying he is anti-American would even be accurate). Yes, it’s safe to say that I don’t even hold much, if any, respect for the guy – but spending so much time criticizing our President because he shook his hand and smiled while at a summit for leaders of the Americas?
Give me a break. This isn’t news reporting. This is stuff for the tabloids. Some “news outlets” such as Fox News are just looking for a way to criticize the President, others such as CNN are saying “fine to shake his hand, not fine to smile” (come on, really?). GOP senators call him “irresponsible” and that he has “to be careful.” Regardless, this isn’t news or worth more than a brief comment during a discussion, if anything at all.
Chavez, who is outspoken, ignorant and may very well be the downfall of Venezuela, is still a world leader and he was still at this summit. We hold diplomatic relations with his country. Same as with a basketball team who trash talks throughout the game, you still shake their hands afterwards. It shows class, it shows poise, it shows that we can be the “bigger man” – not a sign of weakness, but the exact opposite.
If this were Ahmadinejad or Castro (leaders of two countries that we do not share diplomatic relations with) that Obama had shaken hands with and smiled, than alright – I might buy the argument of this being newsworthy… might. But he didn’t. Please, media (and I mean all media, because they pulled the same kind of crap on President Bush when he was in office) – quit being an ingredient in the self-destruction of our country. Go watch All the President’s Men. Go watch State of Play. You have a responsibility – one that is so important – and it isn’t this tabloid, trying-to-get-ratings bullshit.
I think President Obama defended himself over this nonsense very well.
“Its defense budget is probably 1/600th of the U.S.,” he said. “They own [the oil company] Citgo. It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States.”
Seriously, people.
April 20, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Extremely well said. I wish it were the case that people watching such media histrionics understood that it is meant very deliberately to damage a president the network just doesn’t like (Fox) or to drum up viewership (CNN). I wish it were the case that people applied their own common sense judgment to such a handshake and smile, and saw it for the non-event that it is.
But alas, such is not the case. Thanks for breathing a note of calm sanity into the air.
http://thecentersquare.wordpress.com/
April 20, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Huzzah! Well put. The media no longer has a ethical standard. It is all about two things: rating and money. It is shameful. Good job on calling these guys out!
April 21, 2009 at 2:44 am
I’m not so sure–the Obama people have worked awfully hard to create a cult of personality around their guy–everything he does is so vitally important. The entire campaign was more about his identity than about anything he ever said or promised, so much so that all anyone could say was how he “personified” the change people supposedly sought. He built this, and every time this round-the-clock admiration society catches him doing something stupid, he can’t be able to tell people not to pay attention.
But there’s a larger point. This handshaking is part of a bigger pathology of the guy and his ilk–shaking the hands or bowing to dictators while brushing off our friends, or telling the Chinese or the Russians that their abuses are no longer America’s concern. He seeks to strip what makes American foreign policy great–what has always made it great–its morality. The morality that didn’t colonize when the Europeans did, that fought wars to free people from tyranny, that’s all behind us now. We’ve pushed the reset button. We are now of the world, and all its moral equivalence.
There are people suffering at the hands of these men, even if they are no threat to us. Whar courage should the oppressed have against dictators, when our powerful president doesn’t have the courage to stand up to them?
You may not think it important that he shook a thug’s hand, but the guy under that thug’s foot does.
April 21, 2009 at 2:51 am
Then I have to ask why this post was not framed as a commentary on Obama’s policies? In what ways have his policies stripped America of what is great?
I would note, for example, that our western friends recently united in a rebuke to Ahmadinejad at the United Nations. Pres. Bush isolated the US so acutely that he was unable to accrue any such support from our allies.
That is progress of a substantial nature. Handshakes are inconsequential and pose no policy implications. Why should I care what Chavez thinks?
http://thecentersquare.wordpress.com/
April 21, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Jerry – first of all, is Obama telling people not to pay attention?
And secondly, oh my goodness, Jerry, you just opened up a whole new discussion if you want to talk about the morality of American foreign policy. Trust me, I am not a idealist anti-war protester. I support the war in Afghanistan, and for the first few years was on board with Iraq too – but if you look at our history of foreign policy, ANYTHING but ‘morality’ has dictated our decisions. If you think that all of America’s past foreign escapades have been admirable and guided by morality, then I think this conversation could never go anywhere were I to attempt to defend my opinion. Then again, the definition of ‘morality’ is different depending on your ideological (and dare I say, religious) views, so perhaps I should ask you to be more clear on what you mean by that, because as someone who studies and teaches history for a living, I know that anything but morality has guided most of America’s decisions in our modern history.
Maybe when I’m done teaching today I’ll tackle a rebuttal in more detail.
April 21, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Regardless of any American’s stance on Venezuela or what they think of Hugo Chavez and his outlandish regime, you can’t throw away decades worth of forgein relations with one of your (former) biggest allies in an entire region and one of your current largest trade partners. Part of politics is posturing, and I’m sure that’s all this was. The really frustrating thing is that no one even stopped to think that Obama may have been planting a bug on Chavez in that picture…