Yesterday First Lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden appeared at the last NASCAR race of the season to serve as co-grand marshals and shout “Gentlemen, start your engines!” The appearance was part of the Joining Forces initiative and yesterday, according to the White House, FLOTUS was joined by “5,000 active duty and retired military personnel and families and thousands of NASCAR fans” and was loudly booed when her name was announced over the loud speakers.
At an event with such an apparently unifying theme, the crowd’s reaction was an ugly reminder of how personally some have taken the political divisions in our country.
It’s not a recent occurrence, and to my memory, this is the first time that a Democrat has been publicly booed. I certainly don’t recall progressive media condemning how Sarah Palin was booed at a hockey game in Philadelphia:
For those who argue that “Palin wasn’t a First Lady,” what about when progressives booed George Bush at Obama’s inauguration?
Chris Matthews, who recently blasted Obama, seems to have made the only condemnation of the thousands booing.
I’ve always said that respect for public office is a two-way street, and the ultimate failure of this is when the individual holding said office doesn’t themselves demonstrate respect for it.
Is it really a surprise that after three-and-a-half years of being demonized by the party of the President and First Lady (when they aren’t doing the demonizing themselves) that Americans would issue a frosty reception? This is the same President that called Americans “bitter clingers” [their emphasis]:
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
If we’re to discuss manners, I’d say here are several instances where etiquette was breached. If we’re to discuss manners, I’d say etiquette was also breached with the White House’s sanctioning via a corrupt DOJ the murder of border agents with our own federally-funded guns program, Fast and Furious. If manners are sacred, then I’d say etiquette was defiled when the White House took half-a-billion dollars of public money and funneled it to a failing green energy company belonging to his biggest fundraising bundler. I see little in the way of headlines concerning these.
Frankly, I’ll not be lectured to about civility by people who endorse this:
FYI, our President’s remarks on OWS:
“I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel.”
Yes, 300+ criminal acts of “expression.” And the people screaming the loudest over the NASCAR booing are the people who support and endorse this.
Remember, it was the Obama administration which placed the Tea Party on the DHS watch list for domestic terrorism, which to me sounds like bad manners to label someone as a potential domestic terrorist simply for disagreeing with your policies or carrying a military-authorized Gadsen flag.
I haven’t seen a blip about these “bad manners” from the progressives attempting to excoriate conservatives and the NASCAR audience (five thousand of which were military and military families) over the First Lady’s reception.
Our elected officials aren’t sacred idols. They’re not gods, they’re not special. They are regular people whom we hire to legislate and govern on our behalf. Normally, employees are fired for such insubordination and disrespect as listed above. If the President can’t change his dismal approval ratings, we’ll see just that in November 2012.
P.S. I asked last night on Twitter for progressive media types and talking heads to send me links to the stories where they condemned the Palin and/or Bush booing. I still haven’t received any.