Readers here may remember during the presidency of George W. Bush how he reacted to a constituent's written concerns about how "I watched you make fun of moonbats" opposed to the Iraq war who were being "targeted and ridiculed." In a handwritten letter on White House stationery, Bush told the person that “I do have to challenge you, though, on the notion that any citizen that disagrees with me has been 'targeted and ridiculed' or that I have 'made fun' of 'moonbats.'"
Any reader who does recall this has a bad memory, because it didn't happen. But as the New York Post's Emily Smith reported on Wednesday, President Obama allegedly penned a worse response to a Texas teacher who expressed concern about how "any citizen that disagrees with your administration is targeted and ridiculed," and that "I watched you make fun of tea baggers." Obama handwrote the word "tea-baggers" in his response:
Again, though it appears quite real, it apparently remains "alleged" until the White House acknowledges that Obama actually wrote what is seen above — which of course begs the question of whether anyone in the press corps will bother to ask Jay Carney about its authenticity. Or perhaps the Texas teacher, who plans to auction off the letter, will consult a handwriting expert.
If it is indeed real — and the burden of proof is clearly on the White House to demonstrate otherwise — Mary Katharine Ham at Hot Air evaluated the possibilities on Wednesday (some line breaks added by me; bolds are mine):
A couple options, here:
- Obama carelessly used “tea-baggers” after reading it in Ritter’s letter and meant to use Tea Partiers.
- Obama deliberately used the term “tea-bagger” to annoy Ritter, in which case it was quite a lot of effort to sit down and give a “tea-bagger” the honor of a letter from the President of the United States.
- Or, and this is my theory, Obama is so thoroughly surrounded by people who refer to Tea Partiers as “tea-baggers” nonchalantly that it slipped out without him even thinking about it.And, finally, no matter what the reason, the letter’s certainly emblematic of Obama’s utter inability to actually appeal to people who disagree with him despite fancying himself quite the bridge-builder.
The President of the United States, allegedly one of the smartest people to grace our country, sat down to write a hand-written letter to a political dissenter and used the most charged, rude, dirty term possible while claiming he’d never do anything but treat this “tea-bagger” with the utmost respect. His own lofty self-concept survives contact with all conflicting facts, even when they come from his own pen.
On the upside, “tea-bagger” has now been used by a president on presidential stationery. You’re welcome, George Washington. Love, 2013.
"Tea bagger" is a term coined by the Left during the early stages of the Tea Party movement, and is "a derogatory term leveled at Tea Party members which refers to a lewd sexual act."
The teacher's plans to auction Obama's written response would appear to lend credence to his claim that the response is authentic. Imagine the wrath which would rain down on him from government agencies if he tried to auction off a fake (he's probably in line to get his fill just for publicizing Obama's response).
Google News searches at 10:00 a.m. on "Obama teabaggers" and "Obama tea-baggers" (each not in quotes and sorted by date) each returned 10 results, none of which came from establishment press outlets.
Is there any chance at all that my made-up "moonbat" example from George W. Bush would have been similarly ignored if it had really occurred?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
