Like the
late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, President Obama does not get any respect.
In fact,
no modern United States commander-in-chief has been disrespected more than the
nation’s first African-American president.
The most
recent example was House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to deny the
president’s request to address a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7. It so happens that one of 20 Republican
debates was scheduled that evening, prompting Boehner to suggest moving the
address to the next night.
According
to Betty K. Koed, associate historian of the Senate, “The Senate Historical
Office knows of no instance in which Congress refused the president permission
to speak before a joint session of Congress.”
Boehner
aides defend him by saying the speaker didn’t technically refuse the president
permission to speak, he just offered the date. According to the dictionary, however, that’s exactly what
Boehner did.
Merriam-Webster
defines refuse this way: “to express oneself as unwilling to accept <refuse
a gift> <refuse a promotion>.” Dictionary.com lists this among five definitions: “to decline to give;
deny (a request, demand, etc.)”
Hair-splitting
definitions aside, there is no denying that President Obama has been
disrespected from coast to coast.
Marilyn
Davenport, a member of the Orange County Republican Party in California,
e-mailed a cartoon last April with the face of President Obama superimposed on
a chimpanzee. He was accompanied
by two older chimpanzee “parents.” The inscription on the cartoon: “Now you know why – No birth
certificate.”
The New York
Post was roundly criticized for publishing a controversial cartoon in the wake
of Connecticut police shooting a pet chimpanzee that had viciously attacked its
owner’s friend. The cartoon
features two cops – one with a gun in his hand still smoking – standing over a
dead ape. The caption read, “They’ll Have to Find Someone Else to Write the
Next Stimulus Bill.”
Al
Sharpton observed, “Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative
victory of President Obama…and has become synonymous with him, it is not a
reach to wonder: are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?”
The
racist stereotypes were not limited to animals.
Dan
Grose, the appropriately named former mayor of Los Alamitos, Calif., sent out
an e-mail shortly after Obama was inaugurated as president in 2009 under the
headline, “No Easter Egg Hunt This Year.” There was an image of the White House lawn covered with watermelons.
Former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to dismiss Obama as “the food stamp president”
and said Obama “knows how to get the whole country to resemble Detroit.”
Oklahoma
Senator Tom Colburn, a Republican, said to have a good relationship with the
administration, exploited welfare when discussing Obama. He said of the president, “his intent
is to create dependency because it worked so well for him as an
African-American male.”
Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tells everyone who will listen that his primary
goal is defeating President Obama in 2012.
Rep. Joe
Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, interrupted a presidential address on
health care to Congress in 2009 by shouting, “You, lie!”
In many
instances, the president is not accorded routine courtesy.
At the
height of the deficit-ceiling standoff, President Obama telephoned Boehner,
only not to have his call promptly returned.
“The
president of the United States calls the Speaker of the House, in the midst of
an economic crisis, and the speaker won’t pick up the phone? You don’t refuse a call from the president. No matter how deplorable you find his
policies,” wrote Michael Kinsley, a member of the editorial board at Bloomberg
News. “Everyone knows that, by the
rules of telephone tag, it would be Boehner’s obligation to make the next call
even if it wasn’t the president of the United States who was trying to reach
him.”
After
making the first call at night, Obama placed a second call the next day to
Boehner, only to be told that Boehner would call him back at 5:30 p.m.
And why
was Boehner so busy that he didn’t have time to return President Obama’s call?
Part of
that time was spent “chatting with reporters in the Capitol, joking with one
guy about his tan and puffing on a cigarette,” according to the Washington
Post.
The
disrespect has extended to First Lady Michelle Obama and their two daughters –
targets normally considered off-limits in partisan political discourse.
Both Rush
Limbaugh and Glen Beck mocked Malia Obama on air. Beck did so a couple of days after stating a politician’s family
should not be criticized in the public arena.
Michelle
Obama is often portrayed as an angry Black woman. Bill O’Reilly said she looks “like an angry woman” and Sean
Hannity said that she “sounds angry.”
Some of
the fireworks have been generated on the left as well.
Former
President Bill Clinton has violated the custom of former presidents of not
criticizing or offering advice to their successors. And the supposedly liberal New Yorker ran a cover image,
said to be a joke, of President Obama dressed in Muslim garb, with an American
flag burning in the fireplace of the Oval Office and a photo of Osama bin Laden
adorning the wall. Michelle Obama,
wearing an Afro and pictured with a rifle strapped to her shoulder, is giving
her husband a fist bump.
Except
for standing up more forcefully to his Republican critics, there is not much
Obama can do about the disrespect. But there is plenty we can do – kick the
bums out.
George E.
Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is
a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his
Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at
www.twitter.com/currygeorge.
