'Today' Interview: Barack's Bitter-gate Rephrasing No Better

Photo of Mark Finkelstein.
By Mark Finkelstein | May 1, 2008 - 08:26 ET

Would it have been any better for Barack Obama to have said people "rely" on bigotry rather than "cling" to it? I don't think so, but apparently he does . . .

This morning's "Today" aired an extended clip from an interview Meredith Vieira recently conducted of Barack and Michelle Obama. The full interview will be shown Saturday on MSNBC. While I didn't detect any blockbuster moments, there were a few notable nuggets.

On the issue of why he didn't distance himself from Rev. Wright sooner, Obama says: "When those first snippets came out, I thought it was important to give him the benefit of the doubt." That would suggest Obama actually had some doubt as to where Rev. Wright stood. Is that credible, after 20 years in the angry pastor's pews?

View the entire "Today" excerpt here.

Then there was this exchange about Bitter-gate.

BARACK: The comments I made in San Francisco at the end of a long day . . .were very poorly phrased. I should have said "angry and frustrated."

MEREDITH VIEIRA: Instead of "bitter."

BARACK: I should have said "people rely on" their religious faith during these times of trouble.

VIEIRA: Instead of "cling to."

BARACK: As opposed to "cling to."

But Obama conveniently focuses only on the reference he made in San Franciso to religion. Here is the entire sentence:

[I]t's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

How would it have been any less insulting for Obama to have said that during tough economic times, people "rely" on "guns . . . or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment"?

As for Michelle Obama, I can imagine campaign staffers nervously looking on, hoping she wouldn't make any gaffes of the "first time I'm proud of my country" or we’re a country that is “just downright mean” variety. There wasn't anything approaching that magnitude on the gaffe-o-meter. But I can aides might have been holding their breath during this exchange.

VIEIRA: Are there moments when you look back and you go "gee, I wish I could turn the clock back?"

MICHELLE: I was always the one, when he was talking about entering politics, would say "please no, do something else. There's just such an easier way to make a living. So yeah, there's still a level of cynicism, that's there."

Michelle didn't say precisely what her cynicism is directed at; perhaps at the political process. And she did go on to describe the way Barack has inspired people. Still, I can imagine a campaign coach taking Mrs. Obama aside and gently suggesting she lose the "cynicism."

Beyond that, I'd invite readers to view the video and observe the couple's contrasting body language. Barack sits up straight and looks upbeat and in control. Michelle is often hunched, at times giving off uncomfortable, even downcast, vibes.

As for Vieira, she seemed the most relaxed of the three, and while her questioning was far from hostile, neither was it of the softball "how do you two manage to be so great?" variety by any means. Give Meredith a solid B+, Barack a B and Michelle a gentlelady's C.

—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.

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Geez Louise

And to think that their are still sheeple out there who would vote this dork into the number one job on the face of this earth.

Welp...we get what we get, I reckon.

"angry and frustrated",

"angry and frustrated", "bitter", "people rely on", "cling to"..  should've, would've, could've..  yada, yada...  this is just so much BS that distracts from the very real issue of how Obama has "clung to" this total nut job Wright for 20 years, as HIS pastor. To be totally fair, this "clinging" that he's done was no doubt a purely calculated choice that he made to polish his so-called black connection, thereby protecting that particular demo in the overall voting block. Obama, IMO, in no way fits into that kind of charismatic church crowd, so his being there for 20 years has obvious motivations geared strictly toward image building and polishing...  all of which has backfired on him.  

Who smiles least?

Which one of them is the most miserable?

I kinda thought that

I kinda thought that Michelle looked miserable. That she would rather be someplace else than making an interview and explaining away Wright or what Obama said.

Wait a minute! First he

Wait a minute! First he says they "cling to" religion, etc.

Then, a couple of weeks ago he said that he meant they "vote on" issues like guns or gay marriage.

Now he says he should have said "rely on."

This is right out of the Clintons' old "That explanation is no longer operative" playbook.

As for Michelle (we'd be poor if we didn't have all this money!) Obama, she needs a lot of work. Still not ready for prime time; I think she's going to be a negative until the end.

I think she looks angry and pouty. Look at that lower lip! She may be beaten down, but if she is, she is angry at those who have caused it. And she is angry that people won't just "get over it" now that her husband has spoken.

I would still love to see that Fox "body language" expert analyze her.

 

It turns out, uhm, that, ah,

It turns out, uhm, that, ah, Barack is a great, uhm, speech reader and, uhm, not a great, ah, speaker. 

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."  - Sir Winston Churchill

Hunter....have you noticed

that when he doesn't have a prepared speach in front of him, he becomes this stuttering, stammering fool?  He does the same thing when asked a tough question that he has to think about. 

"If a man does his best, what else is there"?

General George S. Patton Jr.

→ I'll say it again

Maybe in Obama's mind we cling to guns, but in Obama's constituency on Southside Chicago, they're actually using their guns.  Way to go Obama.  Kudos Rev. Wright.

♣ a seal

When Will we See This Bigot for What He Is?

This arrogant bigot needs to be flushed from the American Political scene as soon as possible.  He and his mentor the racist pastor will change our country into a socialist state where we all will suffer.

information deprived--low knowledge

These dorks that operated on soundbites to push there bigotry are getting tiresome:
This might prove informative If they can really read ;

Flatbed Hillary
By Quin Hillyer
Published 5/1/2008 12:08:24 AM
One of the more bizarre developments of this campaign season has been to see Hillary Clinton, of all people, turned into an electoral favorite of blue-collar white voters. The reality is that very few people in politics have more contempt for white workers than does this product of Park Ridge, Wellesley, the Senate Watergate Committee, and the super powered Rose Law Firm.
This is the woman who, according to three, independent, respected, credible witnesses, at least one of them a strong Clinton supporter, responded to Southern whites workers voting Republican in 1994 by telling her husband: "Screw 'em. You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

This is the woman who last year insulted the whole state of Mississippi in an interview with Iowa's famous columnist David Yepsen, noting the lack of elected women in both states: "How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi?" she asked. "That's not what I see. That's not the quality. That's not the communitarianism, that's not the openness I see in Iowa."
This is the woman whose mentor and philosophical guiding light, Saul Alinsky, wrote that the white working classes were always "[s]eeking some meaning in life, [so] they turn to an extreme chauvinism and become defenders of the 'American' faith. Now they even develop rationalizations for a life of futility and frustration."

This is the woman who tried to foist a massively bureaucratic health care plan onto the American people in 1993 and 1994, but when told that her plan would be devastating to the small mom-and-pop shops that provide most jobs in America, dismissed those concerns with these words: "I can't be responsible for every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America."

(This was the same government-knows-best health plan of which Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that "anyone who thinks [it] can work in the real world as presently written isn't living in it.")
IN TERMS OF POLICIES, her actions and positions have been directly opposed to the interests of blue-collar workers who pay taxes. Take welfare reform, for instance. Perhaps the single most successful programmatic reform in the past 30 years, it saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, gave people incentives to find jobs, and quite arguably played a big role in a decade of improving statistics in areas ranging from drops in crime to drops in the teen birth rate and the divorce rate. (The old welfare system encouraged divorce by making it in many cases more lucrative to be a single mom.)

Yet her husband Bill not only vetoed welfare reform twice, but did so in accord with Hillary's fierce advice against reform. (He signed it at the third opportunity only to take the issue off the table in his 1996 re-election campaign.)

This is also the woman who has spent an entire career supporting legal positions (and judges) that are contrary to the deeply held views of most white workers. Strong support for racial preferences? Check. Support for partial birth abortion? Check. Judges who rule against basic Christmas displays in the public square? Check. Letting the government take working class homes in order to use the land for big corporate developments? Yes again.Her Whitewater-related shenanigans left taxpayers on the hook for tens of millions of dollars, while old folks expecting retirement housing were left high and dry. Her treatment of White House career employees was notoriously nasty. Her profiteering in the cattle-futures market, and her money-grubbing in cases too numerous to mention, gave evidence of a sense of public entitlement completely at odds with the values and the daily concerns of laborers. And her opposition even to the middle-class-heavy Bush tax cuts of 2001, if it had carried the day, would have cost most workers well over $10,000 in the seven years since.

Yet now Hillary Clinton is depending on white, working-class voters to power her attempted primary-season comeback. They ought to remember that she and her husband Bill once fancied themselves such racial conciliators that Bill welcomed the sobriquet of being "the first black president." Yet in this campaign season we have seen just how quickly the Clintons have fanned racial animus in an attempt to cause a white backlash against Barack Obama.
Lesson: The Clintons are for the Clintons, and only for the Clintons. They will abandon any voter group the moment such abandonment can gain them an advantage. The Hillary Clinton who is suddenly the champion of white laborers today can just as easily be saying "screw 'em" again tomorrow.

Their votes for her are votes against their own interests and values.

Please link rather than

Please link rather than providing entire text of long posts such as these.

Way to go, Obama! Not!

Ok, let's rewrite his "gaff" the way he wish he would have presented it, shall we?

At the end of a long day, Obama believes that "it's not surprising then they get angry and frustrated, people rely on guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

In other words; at the end of a long day, Obama belives that a bunch of middle-class, angry white people merely rely on guns, religion, antipathy, xenophobia, and protectionist buying patterns in order to assuage their frustrations. Oh yea, that's SOOOOO much better, isn't it? Not!

Michelle says that Barack

Michelle says that Barack wants to move us "past these conversations that divide."

Translation: We don't want anyone disagreeing with us or criticizing us.

Good Answer....NOT!

Michelle's non-answer answer on the question of whether Rev. Wright betrayed her husband is very telling. I love how simple yes or no questions are so easily deflected and then Meredith lets her get away with it.

Mark, maybe her cynicism

Mark,

maybe her cynicism was directed at Barack for getting into politics? You know a woman full of that much hatred can't possibly be a cheerful wife if you think about it.

 

"They need to have a course in college called common sense and everyone should take it. Problem is there isn't too many people that could pass or teach it." -my grandfather

Full disclosure: I'm not a

Full disclosure: I'm not a psychologist!

My assessment is free, and worth every penny!

But I think you have hit on something here: I think she is angry at him for going into politics, but she really had no choice.  And of course, she can't admit that, even to herself; so her anger gets re-directed to everyone but him.

$$ not psycology

Another thing to consider is if Senator Obama doesn't win and the attention he is getting causes him to lose his seat in the Senate; do you think she gets to keep that big raise she got for her comfy job when he first go elected to the state senate?

For these folks, I don't

For these folks, I don't think finances are ever a consideration past a certain point.  Nor is there even the tiniest prospect of work where they will have to produce a product in the form of a good or service anywhere in their future, no matter how far they fall from their current perch as a senatorial couple.

As it stands, the world of university chairs, foundation trusteeships, and guest lecturing is wide open to them with windfalls in the tens of millions.  Actually having to work for a living will never be a consideration for them.

PeskyDane,

Good points all! I was looking at what seems to be her sizeable ego and thinking she wouldn't want to give up what she has but you are probably right - win or lose both can join the liberal gravy train of book writing and public speaking. It won't matter if they have nothing to say or if the books are dung - liberals will keep them in the money just to hear their socialist thoughts.

Agnostic - Yes, her ego is

Agnostic - Yes, her ego is definately to be considered. Her sense of entitlement is palpable to the point of being maniacle.  The way she speaks in such messianic terms indicates (if I may play amateur psychologist) something of a psychosis. 

I never thought there could be different classes of meglomania, but I can't help but compare her to Hillary of all people.  When this is over, I can actually see Hill sighing and saying something to the effect of, "It's been a hell of ride."  I suspect if you corner her at the end of her life she would admit that was really good to be Hillary Clinton.

Michelle on the other hand gives me the impression of someone who will seeth to the end of her days at the stupidity of the American people for rejecting her and her husband.  Just say'in.

And she'll probably go on a

And she'll probably go on a national speaking tour to tell us so...over and over... LOL

Ah... the tour that never

Ah... the tour that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend... you're killing me :-)

Michelle Obama will be the

Michelle Obama will be the final nail in the general election coffin. She does not come off well. She is an angry person. I'll bet she was big the Rev. Wright believer in the family.

 

I'm a refugee from the Democratic Party.

 

I kind of get that too.

I kind of get that too.

I heard snippets of this

I heard snippets of this interview on Laura Ingraham today. She broke down a couple of statements by Michelle Obama. MO is definitely a very angry woman. But, she lives for Barack. So much so, she can be detrimental to herself and him. One thing I learned in this life, a marriage is better when the woman loves less than the man.

How's that for cynicism? LOL :o)

Obama still has yet to square the circle of...

His anti-trade comment. Especially considering how he runs a platform that opposes NAFTA and the Columbia Free Trade agreement.

He also can't seem to square the circle of promoting other protectionist policies that are supposed to improve employment in the USA while supporting illegal immigrants who take American jobs and depress wages.

WOW!

Michelle let it be known fo shizzle that she still likes Mr. Wright. Her refusal to criticize him and her constant "move along, nothing to see" smacks of her wanting to protect him. She seemed angry to even have to discuss it and almost angry at Barack for throwing him under the bus.

That interview did them more harm than good.

Wright has become glue on their hands - the more they try to wipe it off, the more they keep spreading it on everything around them.

I got that from her

I got that from her responses. She was unwilling to criticize her so called pastor. I agree the interview did more harm than good.

I think Michelle was the one

I think Michelle was the one who made the decision to join that Church. She's an angry woman and Wright's teachings go right along with that side of her. Wright feeds that anger.

I don't think Barack made the choice but she convinced him. Nonetheless, it's his fault for continuing to support that Church.

My sentiments...

Michelle is the obviously the (D) and Barack is obligingly the (s) in their relationship.

It looks as though that's how he handles his politics, too, choosing to chat with our enemies instead of taking the difficult and necessary "peace through strength" stand.