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The president’s pompous idiot John Kerry finally shows up in France. And he arrives with a minstrel show. Kevin Williamson has fun with it.
… The spectacle of the Obama administration’s dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to “share a big hug with Paris” as James Taylor — who still exists — crooned “You’ve Got a Friend” is the perfect objective correlative for American decline: The pathetic self-regard of John Kerry and James Taylor’s Baby Boomers meets the cynical, self-serving, going-through-the-motions style of Barack Obama’s Generation X as disenchanted Millennials in parental basements across the fruited plains no doubt injured their thumbs typing “WTF?” It is the substitution of celebrity for power, of sentiment for analysis, of sloppy gesture for clear-headed commitment. …
… James Taylor may in fact be the quintessential man of his generation. He is the son of two highly accomplished parents, his father a physician and dean of the University of North Carolina medical school who served in the Arctic with Operation Deep Freeze, his mother a soprano who studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. A child of affluence bringing up the rear of the Age of Aquarius, he was in a mental institution by the time he was of high-school age, and then tried to launch a musical career but launched a career as a full-time junkie instead. His fortunes turned around when he inherited money and used his new status to move to London and exploit his social connections to link up with Paul McCartney and become rich and famous with a catchy song about what a complete screw-up he had been his entire life. At some point, this man who is so colorlessly country-club that he makes the Fox News weekday lineup look like the original cast of Hair declared himself a “churning urn of burning funk.” For the next few decades he proceeded to burden the world with a burgeoning catalog of insipid mediocrity until, finally, he descended to the lowest point a musician ever reaches, three steps down from busking in subway stations: He became a hired hand for politicians, playing with MoveOn.org’s “Vote for Change” tour through swing states on behalf of — small world! — John Kerry, our national personification of vanity, a kept man, dilettante, and Democratic time-server whose career was both launched and sustained by self-serving accounts of his service in the Vietnam War, a conflict that Taylor avoided by being declared mentally unfit to serve. …
Jonathan Tobin treats us to more.
One of the basic rules of satire is that it is virtually impossible to satirize something that is already inherently ridiculous. That axiom is brought to mind as America belatedly sought to reaffirm its friendship with France in the wake of the administration’s decision to snub the Paris unity rally that commemorated the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher market. Neither the president nor the vice president or even Secretary of State John Kerry bothered to come to a gathering attended by over 40 world leaders. But to make up for this, Kerry brought folk rock singer James Taylor to Paris to serenade French officials with a version of Carol King’s classic ballad, “You’ve Got a Friend.” This is something so absurd that it isn’t clear even the cleverest minds at Saturday Night Live or even Charlie Hebdo could adequately convey the sophomoric nature of a lame attempt to make up for a gaffe. …
… Kerry’s cringe-inducing turn hosting his friend Taylor isn’t the dumbest thing he has done at the State Department by a long shot. Having faith in Mahmoud Abbas as a champion of peace and signing a weak nuclear deal with Iran are hard to top. But is an iconic moment that will symbolize Obama and Kerry’s ham-handed approach to allies. A song, even a folk rock classic that allows Kerry to reminisce about his youth spent falsely testifying against his fellow Vietnam vets, can’t substitute for a strong stand against Islamists or even the ability to say the word. Prior to this, it was possible to argue that U.S. foreign policy had become a joke. But after Taylor had finished warbling, even the president and his inner White House circle must be wondering what sort of a fool they’ve unleashed on the world.
Editors of the NY Daily News think the stunt shows as much disrespect as the presidential blowoff.
John Kerry has given new meaning to the term “tone deaf.”
There America’s secretary of state was, on the visit to Paris that he should have made when world leaders linked arms in solidarity against Islamist terror.
There he was, to belatedly convey the resolve of the United States of America in defending civilization and the values of free democracy after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket massacres of 17 people.
And there he was, forgoing a clarion call for global solidarity in favor of a hum-along with gentle, guitar-strumming folkie James Taylor.
It’s absurd but it’s not funny. It’s as bad a diss as President Obama’s no-show failure to appreciate the gravity of this moment in the war on terror. …
Andrew Malcolm lists five reasons to blow off President Real Good Talker. Pickerhead can list five reasons too; A&E is showing reruns of Storage Wars, USA has Modern Family, Kentucky is going to host Vanderbilt for a roast of their men’s basketball team, Discovery has Moonshiner reruns, and Bravo has Beverly Hills Housewives. Storage Wars is the beer drinker’s Antiques Roadshow and it’s not true watching it burns off IQ points.
For once, Barack Obama pays attention tonight to the Constitution, which requires that a president “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.”
There’s nothing in that sacred document about turning it into a pie-in-the-sky, political wish list, criticizing Supreme Court justices to their faces or going on for over an hour on prime-time TV and pre-empting some of our most popular shows. There’s not even any mention of a president delivering the required information in person or verbally — very verbally.
Obama’s State of the Union Addresses have been among the longest in modern history, averaging nearly 65 minutes. Not as long as the 71-minute average of Bill Clinton, who also liked to hear himself talk. But way surpassing the 37 minutes of Ronald Reagan, who was more interested in communicating. …
It’s your patriotic duty not to watch SOTU. Charles Cooke says it’s un-American.
… As a matter of basic constitutional propriety, there is something unutterably rotten about the State of the Union. The essential principle of the American settlement, Thomas Jefferson confirmed in a 1797 letter, “is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions.” And as far as possible, he added, it is incumbent upon “every friend of free government” to keep it that way. Why, then, each and every January are we happy to watch the head of the executive branch walk slap bang into the middle of the legislature and deliver an unchallenged, immoderate, and entirely self-serving lecture about himself and his desires? Why do we permit one branch to issue a campaign speech in the heart of enemy territory? How do we imagine we are serving the interests of fractured government by assembling all of its moving parts in one place?
Within the English system of government — in which the executive and the legislature are fused — such an arrangement would make perfect sense. Within the Madisonian system, however, it is little short of preposterous — especially when one considers that the legislature is accorded no opportunity whatsoever to push back. Explaining his decision to abolish the practice in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson contended that the new country should not tolerate a pageant so similar in nature to the British Speech from the Throne, and announced instead that he would be fulfilling his constitutional duties in writing. …
It can certainly not be hoped that this chief executive (That would be president narcissist) will limit himself in the name of abstract, Jeffersonian principle — nor, for that matter, is it likely that his successor will, either. But why, one has to wonder, does Congress continue to applaud the charade?
Circling back to Kerry’s stunt in Paris, Clarice Feldman says it’s so dumb there’s no room for parody.
I was sound asleep when the phone rang and so I cannot be absolutely sure the conversation was not a dream, but it seemed real enough.
“Hello,” the caller began. “My name is Mr. Mensch, I am president of the Parodists of the World, professional comedy writers, and we want to engage you in a suit against the administration for tortious interference with our livelihood.”
“What exactly are you alleging, I mean specifics?” I responded.
He then launched into a litany of grievances against the administration which the Parodists claimed had made it impossible for them to continue making a living.
“First, our country sent no one to the important anti-terrorism demonstration in Paris, and then there’s Valerie Jarrett calling the march against the slaughter of innocents in Paris a ‘Parade’, as if this were some sort of celebration.‘ Certainly We Would Have Loved To Participate In The Parade,” But We “Got The Substance Right”’.” She said and then proceeded to claim that Holder couldn’t attend because he was in a very important terrorism conference at the time, forgetting that we knew everyone else at the conference made it to the march except Holder. So at the time of the march he was meeting with himself, it seems.”
“Well, that was silly, “I agreed. “And?” I waited for the next item.
“Then our secretary of state, John Kerry, whose entire life has been fashioned around his self-imagined superior diplomatic skills and international affairs expertise, shows up speaking execrable high school level French, accompanied by an aging ex-druggie who sings to the grieving French ‘You’ve Got a Friend’”
“I have to agree that was preposterous and really embarrassing. One wag suggested the French ought to respond by having Carly Simon sing, ‘You’re so Vain’ to the President and his Secretary of State. ‘Send in the Clowns’ comes to mind.” …