Today's Elites

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Is President Obama Acting Fishy? (A Metaproof.)

Dear reader, you may recall some months ago -- I believe it was in August -- that the President's communications director asked Obama partisans to report to her all things (chain emails and the like) fishy in opposition to her principal's health care cause. Now, Ms. Douglas' use of  the word "fishy" in this context, I believe, was not as accidental as it first might appear. Let us pause for a moment to consider this. As many a wag thereafter immediately concluded (including yours truly, of course) she was in essence insinuating for the word "fishy" the meaning "seditious." But she couldn't just come right out and say that. Why? Because then all the old shibboleths that liberals were really fascists in sheep's clothing would come home to roost. (((I know, (sigh) I just really upset the immiscible metaphor purists here.(Ugh!))) But let's dig a bit deeper here, shall we? What was Linda (I hope I'm not being overly familiar here, after all she did come into my living room via the boob tube) referring to in her ponderously, seemingly nonchalant and ill-chosen way? (Remember, after ll, she is the so called communcations director.) What and where are these home grown chain emails she bespoke?

Let us interpolate here some reflections upon the matter of what constitutes "proof" in cases such as the one before us. Now, Mr. Leibniz pretty much coined the the concept of "sufficient reason." (If one can be said to have "coined" a concept, that is.) The exemplar of the most elegant usage of this  methodology takes us far afield from the topic that I broached above. (However, not too far, given the identity and namesake of this blog.) Recall, if you will, the so-called "Longfellow Wars" that Mr. Poe engaged in. Ah, but this does give some little piquancy  to that oft quoted bit of doggerel: "He's a poet and didn't know it because his nose is a Longfellow." (With apologies to Messers Sterne and Gogol. They of Tristram Shandy and The Nose eclat, you see.) But, I digress. Back to the issue at hand. In that series of verbal rencounters, if you will,  betwixt Edgar and Longfellow's pseudonymous defender Outis, ((((("nobody" in school boy Greek (probably plagiarized from Homer.(!))) ((I hope that's quite enough parentheses. (My Kingdom for an editor.))))))  the issue was not so much a plagiarism in the sense of a "word for word type" plagiarism, but rather, the more hard to prove and thereby more devious one of plagiarizing content.

Now, what has this to do with the by now dimly remembered issue referenced above?, the restive reader will be seeming to urge. To wit: Ms. Douglas was unconsciously practicing the principle that the great Schiller illumined in The Cranes of Ibykus. Which is to say, she is covering for an hysterical reaction (a freakout, in common parlance) by Obama's inner circle (read especially Rahm Emanuel,) to the exposure of the content of the healthcare legislation. You see earlier that year as Mr. Emanuel's brother Ezekiel was testifying on behalf of the principle of "cost containment" in healthcare, he was unceremoniously taken to task in no uncertain terms, i.e. as a fascist, by Tony Chaitkin, a LaRouche partisan. Ms. Douglas would not want to bring any attention to this, because it is de rigueur, in such circles, never  refer to LaRouche by name,thereby giving him too much credit,  rather to either pronounce the words "extremist" or in this case the rather watered down term of "fishy." Not to alienate the "Reagan Democrats" more than necessary. Remember, Sarah Palin was calling the IMAB provisions, death panels by now. Republicans in general were openly criticizing the bill as leading to rationing on the floor of the Congress. So, frankly speaking, there was no need for Ms. Douglas to be so obtuse in her warning of fishy emails, in the tradition of erstwhile usage of the term "dark forces" by Politburo types. Did she somehow want to track Mr.or Mrs. Jones surrepticious visits to certain "dark forces" websites?

Well now you see the results of this type of behavior among the Obamaites and their media hangers-on. Even the pollsters, a notoriously obfuscating bunch, are showing overwhelming popular resistance, and I use that term advisedly, to the healthcare legislation. So how does Barack react to the disastrous election of  Scott Brown in Massachusetts? Fishily. One: change the subject. Talk about  jobs, jobs, jobs. Throw Geithner under the bus. Bring Volker in as a placebo to the "populists." Two: connive in mysterious ways behind the scenes to get the budget cutting IMAB provision in no matter what. Very fishy, indeed. QED.

(Kudos to eLLUMINATI BLOG for the spectacular image above.)

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