Barack Obama is not just a BS artist of the first rank; he is the gold standard in BS. He’s not so good that anyone who knows what Obama is talking about would fall for his act, but we must give credit where credit is due. When it comes to BS, he never lets his guard down. I think it’s because he even dishes it out to himself. Thus he told political adviser David Axelrod after an event where he stated his opposition to same-sex marriage: “I’m just not very good at bullshitting.” BS!
Time picks up on the account lifted from Axelrod’s memoir in Zeke Miller’s “Axelrod: Obama misled nation when he opposed gay marriage in 2008.” Hey, Obama’s misrepresentation of his views on gay marriage are the least of it. Any fool could see through that. Axelrod provides an Obama man’s modified limited hangout.
Obama’s attribution of his retrograde views to his own religious faith, though, took it to the next level. Recall how Obama explained his alleged view in 2008 on the nature of marriage as a union of man and woman: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman,” he told Rick Warren. “Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”
Only in his second term would Obama counsel Christians to stay off their high horse and recall the Crusades. Only in his second term would Obama instruct us that Christians have a lot to answer for.
Obama asserts that Axelrod got it wrong. Obama denies that he misrepresented his views on gay marriage for political purposes. Is there anyone in his right mind who didn’t understand that Obama has believed in gay marriage all the while? The art has inherent limits.
Obama never lets his mask slip. It’s part of his artistry. Thus the Hill’s Justin Sink reports:
The president said David Axelrod, his former senior adviser, was “mixing up my personal feelings with my position on the issue” when he said Obama publicly backed civil unions rather than gay marriage because it was more politically palatable.“I always felt that same-sex couples should be able to enjoy the same rights, legally, as anybody else and so it was frustrating to me not to, I think, be able to square that with what were a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there,” Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed.The president said he sincerely felt that civil unions were “a sufficient way of squaring the circle,” but learned over time that gay couples felt they were stigmatized by being denied full access to marriage.“I think the notion that somehow I was always in favor of marriage per se isn’t quite accurate,” Obama said.
So Obama rejects Axelrod’s account? The Hill reports:
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he would not “disagree or quibble” with Axelrod’s recollection.
As if this weren’t enough, there is more:
In the interview with BuzzFeed, Obama argued that LGBT activists were likely happier with his administration — despite its muddled stance on marriage rights — because some of their goals were easier to achieve.Obama chalked up the dramatic shift on marriage to “the willingness of people to recognize the regard they had for the LGBT communities or people in their families.”“But part of it is also, frankly, that an issue like non-discrimination for the LGBT community is a little bit easier than the issues of inner-city poverty, right? You not discriminating against a gay person may require you to undergo some change of mind, but it doesn’t require you potentially calling on the government to provide more support for impoverished children so they’ve got more daycare that’s high quality,” he said.
To achieve this level of art requires a certain kind of kind of relentlessness. Obama has it it. That’s no surprise; you don’t arrive at this level of achievement overnight. It takes years of work to cultivate and perfect even a natural gift.
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