Obama Derangement Syndrome

David Frum and David Horowitz have both warned against it, the latter by name. But it's spreading like a summer cold through the murkier parts of the right-wing blogosphere.

The Manchurian Candidate/Muslim/Communist/Anti-Christ riffs are old hat by now, and besides, the world didn't suddenly go dark on January 20. No one's buying that hysteria any more, so at this point the bloodshot gaze of the wingnuts has become focused on matters of somewhat less than apocalyptic import.

Obama's Wife Touched The Queen! (Too informal.) Obama Bowed To The Saudi King! (Too formal.) He should have shaken hands. (See the first sentence in this paragraph). Bush bowed too, but what the heck, he was just receiving a medal. Obama Thinks Austrian Is A Language!* He Gives Bad Gift!

Well, no, I take back my comment about "apocalyptic import." It's just that it can now be discerned in minor matters that most people would miss:

Jamie Glazov, the author of "United in Hate," said Obama's act actually was to be expected.

"And people don't know what's going on here? Are we kidding?" he said. "This is simply the continuation of fellow traveling. It's to be totally expected. Leftists have prostrated themselves before despots throughout history – during the whole Cold War and now vis-à-vis jihadists in the terror war. 'United in Hate' crystallizes with precision how and why this dark process occurs."

He cited the Obamas' less formal interaction with the queen earlier.

"Obviously, the queen does not wield totalitarian power and does not mete out sadistic punishment – with which a believer yearns to identify. The Saudi king, meanwhile, is a tyrannical entity to which Obama can subjugate his individuality – and through which he can vicariously experience a feeling of power and purpose. This is the process of negative identification that every leftist must practice and that 'United in Hate' documents is at the heart of every leftist's main driving force," he said.

Satire is dead.

Meanwhile Barack Obama is taking on the economy, North Korea, and the myriad of problems, big and small, that cross his desk every hour. I'm no apologist for the politics of the new President, as readers will know, but this ceaseless gutter-level kvetching, this din of spittle-flecked shriekage, tells me two things: 1) Obama's doing maddeningly well in his third month in the presidency; and 2) the wingnuts' fascination with the trivial and the superficial has morphed into a kind of borderline insanity. They're feeding off each other in an ever-expanding folie à plusieurs.

Get a grip, people.

As for me, I promise never to talk about Stephen Harper's hair again. Mea bloody culpa.

___________________
*Austrian is a variant of High German. Whatever the pretentious Mark Steyn thinks, it is not the same German spoken in Germany or in Switzerland, and I'm not even referring here to the many dialects spoken in all three countries. There are vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical differences. Austrian German, in fact, is recognized as a separate variety of German under international law.

Coming a little closer to earth, it's not inconceivable that someone from south of the border might ask, in an informal manner, "What is a 'soda' in Canadian?" Hardly worth columns of hot air, is it, even if the President is the one asking the question?

More GOP Obama Derangement Syndrome

An earlier ripe example, above.

Obama's speech to the children turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, at least politically. What is a Republican to do with an address that didn't announce the establishment of a second Hitler Youth?

Why, just make stuff up. Of course.

"Clearly last week there was a plan with the Department of Education," said [Florida GOP Chairman Jim] Greer. "When you ask students to write a letter to the President on, how we can help you with your new ideas, Mr. President, that is leading the students in an effort to push the President's agenda. Now that the White House got their hand in the cookie jar caught, they changed everything, they redid the lesson plans, they released the text, and tomorrow he's gonna give a speech that every president should have an opportunity to give."

Oddly, George Herbert Bush didn't change his own lesson plans in 1991:

Let me leave you with a simple message: Every time you walk through that classroom door, make it your mission to get a good education. Don't do it just because your parents, or even the President, tells you. Do it for yourselves. Do it for your future. And while you're at it, help a little brother or sister to learn, or maybe even Mom or Dad. Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter -- and I'm serious about this one -- write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address.

Over at Damian Penny's, commenter Bruce Rheinstein points out that the Democrats did make some noise about it at the time, as did the National Education Association. "Same shoe, different foot," he says.

Here, thanks to Bruce, is a description of what happened then. I don't think the two controversies are remotely comparable. For the Democrats and their allies, it was all about the pittance that this staged event cost the taxpayer: some $26,750. The controversy arose after the event as a fairly routine exercise in political hay-making.

The public does not appear to have been involved at all, much less driven into a mindless frenzy of weeping and tooth-gnashing by crazed talk-show hosts and GOP operatives. No children that we know of were yanked from school. There was no wild talk about "indoctrination"; no foamy paranoia about changing the contents of the speech at the last moment.

But America today--or a good portion of it, anyway--has apparently gone barking mad. Contrary to the comment by the Faux News robette above, Obama's address to schoolchildren was preceded by those of Bush père and Ronald Reagan. But there appears to be no precedent at all for the current outbreak of political ergotism.

[H/t CC and JJ]