That Blair, What A Cut-Up

Update: Jules thinks I'm being too understanding regarding Obama and the bust. Fair point ... just fighting that ODS, perhaps. I've been seeing a lot of anger around and I once had a very brief but productive general exchange with Glenn Reynolds causing me to think on how counter-productive too much of that can be. I'm not going to run for four years on outrage and offense and we have a long, long way to go.

As Fausta points out, there are still enough "Winstons" in the WH. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, folks. We're in a long war.  

And the first nomination for best photo caption of 2009 goes to Tim Blair for this:

The couple in happier times, before Hassan removed his wife’s head

Speaking of humor, the Brits are certainly going to need their traditional sense of it to keep them cheery given this news. I can appreciate Obama having a different take on an item loaned to America post 9/11, one Bush featured in his office. But at the same time I find it somewhat revealing.

Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing and pulse rates soaring among anxious British diplomats.

It was during Churchill's second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather.

In a sense I think this speaks to why Obama is often seen as having a different world view from that of previous American leaders - and most Americans, as well, actually. For better or worse, Obama has a very different individual and family history than most white and even black Americans. A part of him is only first generation American. Don't rush to judgment on that. In a sense, our Founders hadn't lived in "America" for generations, either. It will be interesting to see how his unique worldview jibes with that of many Americans over time. 

Having said that, a more mature handling of the matter might have been to see if it could quietly be arranged for the bust to sit in Blair House, or another location besides his office. Perhaps that option was explored, I don't know.

In any event, cheer up - the Brits could use Sir Winston back right now if you ask me.

American politicians have made quoting Churchill, whose mother was American, something of an art form, but not Mr Obama, who prefers to cite the words and works of his hero Abraham Lincoln. Indeed a bust of Mr Lincoln now sits in the Oval Office where Epstein's Churchill once ruled the roost.

Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr Obama than those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership.

Comments

[Fred Beloit]

With all that is going on in the Administration, these guys have time to discuss whether Churchill's bust should be kept in the WH? Or maybe it was a snap decision by our new President, which causes one to pause over his priorities and thought (feeling) processes. What could this mean, really what is his point?

[Sally]

Obama is the President of the United States, not Kenya. And Churchill's bust on display here was symbolic of his relationship with the United States, especially during WW II, it has nothing to do with Kenya. A part of Obama may only be "first generation American" but he now occupies an office that is more than 200 years old and is representative of the entire country and its history. It shouldn't be tainted by the personal gripes of a particular occupant at any one time.

That being said I doubt seriously that Obama gives a rat's behind about Kenya or whatever happened to his grandfather and that sending the bust back probably had more to do with redecorating the Oval Office and the bust not fitting in with the new look or something.

[Continuum]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I am hard pressed to read anymore into the replacement of the bust of Churchill with that of Lincoln other than a redecorating choice.

It would be more effective to read tea leaves than to ascribe some kind of hidden meaning of our relations with the UK in the positioning of a bust.

[Fred Beloit]

Cxntinuum writes: "It would be more effective to read tea leaves..."
Well, the world needs fortune tellers too. Does it? In any case I don't think the Brits will agree with C. Perhaps they will redecorate 10 Downing and give us back an image of, say, Eisenhower. We wouldn't care, would we?

[muffler]

Who cares! Really get a life. It was on loan for 8 years. The Smithsonian has tons of Churchill stuff. I am sure there is a fair explanation and it just another emotion diversion. This obsessiveness of right astounds me. OCD.

[whiskey]

Actually, Obama is filled with rage against White People, read his book. In it he talks about how he wished he could do what Malcolm X fantasized (X borrowed in turn from Frantz Fanon, another half-White guy who hated Whites). Which was a "symbolic" act of violence (in Fanon's work, murder of a White guy) to "purge" himself of White blood. Remarkable considering his White mother married (polygamously) his Black father.

Obama is the product of two parents who abandoned him, a polygamous marriage with gazillion Muslim fanatic tribal relatives, including Sharia proponent Raila Odinga, for whom Obama campaigned in Kenya. He grew up in Jakarta, filled with the usual Third World Muslim anti-American railings. He has nothing but obvious contempt and hatred for America's symbols, traditions, and institutions, and has a deep hatred for Working Class Whites, shared by his SWPL yuppie fawners.

Obama is quite likely a closet Muslim, most of his book's critique of America and Americans comes straight out of Islamist founder Sayyid Qutb. Like Qutb, he is abstemious, moralizing, addicted to anti-Western ideology, and filled with racial hatred. He certainly IS very sympathetic to Muslims, and has told Muslims world-wide that they should trust him on that score.

The New Yorker Cover is probably not that far off. While Obama is unlikely to put a picture of Osama on the White House mantel, he certainly seems sympathetic to Osama and other Jihadis.

Obama is certainly not culturally American, nor can he understand Americans, nor is filled with sympathy for the majority of Americans.