Uncle Jesse hates Obama, too

The Oklahoman's letters section is an embarrassment to the state. It is heavily slanted towards the right, and the views expressed often parrot easily-debunked lies about progressive views and politicians.  Just as bad, however, is the style that these letters are written in. You often see poor use of sarcasm, tired sports analogies, and, as in the case of today's letter from George E. Sneed of Oklahoma City, the simplistic use of what might politely be called "country witcisms" to get a point across.

Mr Sneed writes:

President Obama must not have attended an elementary school in this country. Otherwise he would've learned the serious consequences of misjudging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by double-dog daring him not to use chemical weapons against his own people or we'd militarily meet that crime against humanity. Assad hasn't only accepted the challenge but has murdered hundreds of civilians by using poison gas. He, with Russia's support, has triple-dog dared Obama to strike him with an air attack, and has threatened to counterattack with terrorism on a grand scale.

Is this guy for real? "Double-dog daring"? "Triple-dog dared"? Should any serious newspaper publish this?

It is tempting to give Mr Sneed much more credit here. After all, he begins with a dog-whistle line about how Obama "must not have attended an elementary school in this country"--  lest we forget, he spent four years in Indonesia (when he was training to be a secret Muslim Manturian candidate). So let's make sure we remind the old white people in Oklahoma that Obama is a brown person who has had life experiences outside of the United States-- that's bad!!! Xenophobia is a powerful tool...

Anyhow, perhaps Mr Sneed, in embracing his "elementary school" zinger, has decided to write the rest of his letter as though he were actually in elementary school. But that still doesn't exclude the lunacy of this letter. Did Obama "dare" Assad to use chemical weapons? Of course not-- indeed, when you look at the context of the actual quote (this is hard for a lot of Oklahoman readers to do) you see that the meaning was far more complex, and referred more to chemical weapons "falling into the hands of the wrong people" than anything else. In fact, it seems like Obama-- perhaps naively-- was assuming that Assad wouldn't use them, but the rebels would. Either way, this certainly wasn't a "double-dog dare" as Mr Sneed suggests. 

So, uh, nanny nanny boo boo? Or something.

Anyhow, Mr Sneed continues:

At that point, Obama realized that he had let his mouth overload his behind and ran squealing like a pig stuck under a gate for Congress to rescue him from his self-inflicted injury. Congress has declined to do so. Then Russian President Vladimir Putin threw Obama a lifeline by promising that Russia would arrange for Syria to surrender its chemical weapon stocks to the U.N. This from a country that slaughtered millions of its own citizens during the last century. Russia's history of genocide makes Syria look like a piker.

Holy hell. Seriously? He actually wrote "he had let his mouth overload his behind and ran squealing like a pig stuck under a gate"? This sounds less like an elementary school kid and more like Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard! This aside, it always makes me laugh when Oklahoman writers assume to actually know what was in the mind of someone else, and then construct a narrative (always negative) relating this mindset.

In any event, it's hard to see what the problem is. Obama clearly stated that the use of chemical weapons would "would change [his] calculus" and "would change [his] equation” in terms of military intervention. When chemical weapons were used, he went to Congress to ask for this, which isn't exactly a crazy thing to do, given how war-weary Americans were. The only reason Congress seemed to go against it was because, well, it was a brown Democrat asking, and they tend to hate anything he does.

Did Putin really "throw Obama a lifeline"? It seems much more likely that they were saving their own skin from international backlash given that they were the ones who had supplied the weapons in the first place!

And someone PLEASE remind Mr Sneed that the Soviet Union dissolved about 20 years ago. Invoking something that Stalin or Lenin did as some sort of "history of genocide" given that there is an entirely new form of government in place just makes you sound like some sort of Oklahoma version of Rip Van Winkle. "The Commies, son! The COMMIES!!!!!!!!"

And what the fuck is a "piker"?? I'm too tired to look up country witicisms like this. It's an embarrassment. Memo to the Oklahoman: some readers are under 70.

Uncle Jesse concludes:

The Obama administration has been the most corrupt and hapless one since Warren G. Harding's presidency. We've now lost all face with our allies and have become a laughingstock to our enemies. I shudder to think what may happen during the remainder of Obama's presidency unless Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court do something to rein in his hubris.

Ha! It's hard to imagine how one can be both so clever as to engage in all sorts of corruption (surpassing Bush, Reagan, and Nixon) but at the same time also be completely hapless. Right wing nut jobs want to have it both ways. Fortunately, they seem to excel at cognitive dissonance and so it's not much of a problem. (There's also a bit of irony in highlighting the Harding administration, given that his economic policies were definitely something the right wing would love-- even though he is regarded as a terrible president.)

And finally, what is Congress and the Supreme Court going to do?? Is this code for impeachment? Whichever. It doesn't matter. While Mr Sneed's letter isn't the worst letter the paper has ever run, it is still an embarrassment to the state. Why not just write "I hate Obama and liberals!" and spare us the juvenile elementary school taunts and lame folksy quips?