It probably will be fifty years at least before a woman becomes president after almost every other country in the world has had one. The 2008 campaign was a shameful example of sexism at work, some 40 years after the second wave of feminism supposedly changed people's minds about women's roles and their place on the world stage.
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Obama has barely been in office two days, yet the pundits are trying to analyze how effective of a president he is.
Not even I, who has been highly critical of Obama in the past, am that presumptuous to either call him the second coming of FDR or to write off his presidency.
Of course the media should do its job:
A lot of people, and not just conservatives, think the media have rolled over for Obama. I've certainly been critical of the coverage at times. But what's past is prologue. If journalists don't start holding the 44th president accountable -- in the same way the left wanted us to hold George W. Bush accountable -- we will have defaulted on our mission. It will be bad for the country, and bad for Obama. He didn't run as a black candidate. He ran as a politician who happened to be black. And so our journalism must be color-blind as well.
As we know, the media by and large NEVER held Bush accountable for anything, while at the same time reporters and pundits held Bill Clinton accountable for EVERYTHING from the time he was in utero. Why is Kurtz wringing his hands over the media possibly not doing their job on Obama? The media haven't done their job in years.
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Here is another commentary from the WSWS about Obama's inaugural address:
Most popular among this socio-political layer were the sections of the speech suggesting that the economic collapse precipitated by Wall Street is the fault of the American people as a whole, who now must accept sacrifice in the interests of the nation. In particular, they fastened on the lines about a “new era of responsibility” and the financial meltdown being the result of “greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”
Columnist George Will, who hosted Obama at a pre-inauguration dinner with other right-wing commentators, praised in particular his use of the Biblical phrase, “The time has come to set aside childish things,” interpreting it as an admonition to the vast majority of the American people for demanding “more goods and services than they are willing to pay for.” Driven by his contempt for working people, Will happily endorses the demand that they give up such “childish things” as the belief that they have a right to a job, a home, health care and a decent income.
That's why the alarm bells went off in my head when I listened to him.
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Here is some good commentary mentioning some New Deal revisionism and also Obama's swiping words and phrases from other people.
And yes, it is true Obama is not a great orator. He's okay, but in listening to him and listening to other presidents' speeches, he doesn't particularly stand out. Bill Clinton for one was and is a much better orator when not running overtime.
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