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I have rarely seen a group of people so committed to outrage and self-righteous indignation as the far right in this country.
Manufactured rage is truly a spectacle to behold.
It’s not exactly a secret that President Obama looks to Abraham Lincoln as a political hero. When Obama was inaugurated, he used Lincoln’s Bible, and when it came time to place items of significance in the Oval Office, Obama chose a Lincoln bust and the Emancipation Proclamation.With this in mind, on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, the right has chosen an odd story to complain about.
Fox News is manufacturing outrage over Obama’s decision not to attend the commemoration ceremony for the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and baselessly speculating that Obama’s resentment over the nation’s unfinished business “in bringing the country and its races together” may be the cause. […]Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade discussed with Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger whether it is “inappropriate for our president to bypass” the commemoration ceremony of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address during the November 19 edition of Fox & Friends. At one point Kilmeade asked whether Henninger thought Obama was refusing to attend because “after that address and after the Civil War we still weren’t a perfect union? We still had to wait for the Civil Rights Act and so many – the integration of schools, Brown vs. the Board of Education?” Henninger replied, “I think probably that President Obama does think the unfinished business remains unfinished in bringing the country and its races together.”
It’s worth noting that Fox isn’t the only one raising a fuss – conservative outlets have been complaining about Obama “snubbing” Gettysburg for months.There are, however, some angles to this the right has overlooked. First, there have been 28 presidents since Lincoln, and 27 of them did not commemorate the anniversaries of the Gettysburg Address – and this includes Reagan, who did nothing on the 125th anniversary, and never visited Gettysburg as president. (The exception was William Howard Taft.)
Obama, in other words, is doing largely what nearly all of his predecessors have done without controversy.Second, I’m trying to imagine the uproar from some of these same conservative critics if Obama did go to Gettysburg to mark the occasion today. We can all probably imagine the predictable rhetoric: Obama thinks he’s Lincoln! The arrogance! Why is he trying to politicize a cemetery? This must have something to do with distracting us from the health care website! And maybe Benghazi!Making matters slight worse is, well, this.
President Obama’s recitation of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is sparking hysteria from the right-wing media who slammed the president for omitting the phrase “under God.”
The right’s apoplexy on this was extremely broad – National Review, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Drudge, and others ran furious pieces expressing outrage that Obama had the nerve to omit the phrase “under God” from his recent recitation of the Gettysburg Address. Rush Limbaugh speculated that the president did this on purpose to “get a rise out of conservatives.”
The truth is less provocative.
Do entary filmmaker Ken Burns had a variety of prominent figures – including all five living presidents – to read portions of the Address for a video. Burns relied on the text of the first draft of the speech – which did not include the words “under God.”In other words, the right became apoplectic about Obama not using a phrase Lincoln didn’t write.
Conservative media has struggled badly of late, with a list of ignominious failures too long to list. Today does little to improve its reputation.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/right-flubs-gettysburg-story-twice
Of course, Rachel Maddow had a of good time last night trashing the entire Repug, hate media machine, "under God".
Last edited by boutons_deux; 11-20-2013 at 05:18 PM.
I have rarely seen a group of people so committed to outrage and self-righteous indignation as the far right in this country.
Manufactured rage is truly a spectacle to behold.
I agreel
Well, they can't be outraged over important things like NDAA and domestic surveillance because...well....... they supported it too...
Obama's Handwritten Tribute To The Gettysburg Address
The White House on Tuesday released a hand-written essay President Barack Obama wrote in tribute to the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Read it below:
Conservatives Big on Fear, Brain Study Finds
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...in-study-finds
Meanwhile, the neuro-scientific fact of two very different political creatures helps clarify much of the political antics of modern democracies.
Most societies are divided into a party that wants change (the more liberal party) and one that is afraid of change (the conservatives). The liberal party is generally more intellectual and the conservative party is more anti-intellectual.
The conservative party is big on national defense and magnifies our perception of threat, whether of foreign aggressors, immigrants, terrorists, or invading ideologies like Communism. To a conservative, the world really is a frightening place.
Given that their brains are so different, it is hardly surprising that liberals and conservatives should spend so much time talking across each other and never achieving real dialog or consensus.
As scientists we hope that these results are replicated because they shed so much light on political behavior. As citizens, we would prefer if politicians were not divided into such different categories of political animal.
From the Gettysburg foundation, the people who care the most about it:
http://www.gettysburgfoundation.org/41
They specifically asked Obama to read the first, earliest draft of the Address.
Here they all are laid out side by side:Copies of the Gettysburg Address
Only five manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address exist. Two of them, the “Nicolay Copy” and the “Hay Copy,” are in the Library of Congress. The third, the “Everett Copy,” is at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. The fourth, the “Bancroft Copy,” is at Cornell University. The fifth copy, the “Bliss Copy,” is in the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House.
The “Nicolay Copy” is often called the “first draft” because it is believed to be the earliest of the copies that exist of the Gettysburg Address. The “Hay” or “second draft” version was probably made by Lincoln shortly after his return from Gettysburg. Its phrasing more closely matches contemporaneous accounts of the speech than that of the “Nicolay” or “first draft” version.
The other three known manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address were written by Lincoln for charitable purposes well after the Nov. 19, 1863, event. The “Everett Copy” was written for Edward Everett, the orator who spoke for two hours at Gettysburg, immediately prior to Lincoln’s Address at the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Everett asked Lincoln for a copy to include in a volume he was assembling to mark the Nov. 19 dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. He also included in that volume his own two-hour oration, other speeches given that day, maps of Gettysburg and accounts of the day. He wanted to auction it, with the proceeds going to support health care for Civil War soldiers.
Another copy, the “Bancroft Copy,” was requested by historian George Bancroft. The fifth copy, the “Bliss Copy,” was made for Col. Alexander Bliss and is the version that is most often reprinted today.
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/...gettysburg.htm
Nicolay Copy
Named for John G. Nicolay, President Lincoln's personal secretary, this is considered the "first draft" of the speech, begun in Washington on White house stationery. The second page is writen on different paper stock, indicating it was finished in Gettysburg before the cemetery dedication began. Lincoln gave this draft to Nicolay, who went to Gettysburg with Lincoln and witnessed the speech. The Library of Congress owns this manuscript.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.”
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow, this ground – The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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