This past week has shown us the emergence of not one but two massive opportunities for the right wing squawkers to have themselves a little feeding frenzy. The bigger of which, the teabagging, I’ll deal with tomorrow when it fizzles out and turns into nothing, but the other, the pirate deal, has proven to be a damn circus.
Remember how a whole bunch of people spent a little while bitching at Obama for not doing anything? Well at the time I’d wondered how they’d react to eventual action and I finally got it. Sean Hannity decided to invent a story and then misinterpret an article in order to go after Obama, which ended up getting him on the wrong side of Bernie Goldberg.
The jist of it is this: Hannity reads a Politico article that said Obama’s authorization to snipe the pirates was “legally required”, meaning that they couldn’t fire unless Obama gave them the say-so. In his zeal to attack Barry-O, the Manatee spun that to mean that Obama was legally required to give that authorization, meaning that Obama didn’t deserve the credit he wan’t actually taking. Goldberg sums it up well:
He gets — if you want to use the word, “credit,” I’ll use that word. He was the commander-in-chief, it happened on his watch, that’s the way it goes in the real world of politics. If something bad happened here, and thank God it didn’t, but if something bad happened here, I’ll guarantee you, I’ll tell you who would be leading the crusade against him, you, and you may have been right, if something bad happened, you may have said this is because he’s seen as soft and they took advantage of him. You might have been right. But it didn’t. Look, Sean, the good guy is alive and well. The bad guys are dead. That’s all good. It happened on Barack Obama’s watch. He gets the credit.
Now, if there’s one thing to learn in this world it’s that you can never underestimate Limbaugh. While an incompetent hack like Hannity might have no idea what to do with a successful conclusion to the pirate rescue story except moan at Obama for taking credit, no one can match Rushbo’s ability to vomit crazy into the ears of his listeners. Under the unbelievable headline “President Obama Ordered the Killing of Three Black Muslim Kids”, we find the following:
They were kids. The story is out, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but apparently the hijackers, these kids, the merchant marine organizers, Muslim kids, were upset, they wanted to just give the captain back and head home because they were running out of food, they were running out of fuel, they were surrounded by all these US Navy ships, big ships, and they just wanted out of there. That’s the story, but then when one of them put a gun to the back of the captain, Mr. Phillips, then bam, bam, bam. There you have it, and three teenagers shot on the high seas at the order of President Obama.
Let’s just assume this story is true. For the sake of argument, the Somali pirates were indeed between 17 and 19 years old and just wanted to give up, whatever.
First off, Limbaugh knows damn well that if this happened in the middle of Harlem and a kid in a 7-11 put a gun to the head of a cashier, he would have been totally on the police’s side after they painted the wall with him. He wants to use the “if this was a Republican president” analogy, so try and imagine if this story had been three late-teenage kids in a bank and the NYPD picked them all off. Or if they were Al Qaeda members holding American tourists hostage, would Limbaugh have given a shit if they were teenagers?
Secondly, how is that Obama’s responsibility? He authorized the shot, he didn’t order it. They weren’t forced to shoot these people, the Navy had the shot and needed authorization before they were allowed to do it. This isn’t the kind of situation where Obama can just hold off giving the word because he doesn’t feel like he knows the histories of the people on board. That’s not his job. Good lord, if he’d said no and then the captain had gotten shot, the headline would be “President Obama Protects Muslim Pirates Instead of American Citizen.”
Thirdly, why the hell am I being tougher on pirates than Rush Limbaugh?
Fourthly, I need a drink. Maybe ten.
