The Vetting of the President 2012

Breitbart.com has published its late namesake’s final piece. The statement on the site claims it is the first step in their quest to fulfill Breitbart’s desire to “vet” President Obama.

His last column concerns a play about the community organizer Saul Alinsky that was staged in Chicago in 1998. Of note, in Breitbart’s opinion, is that then-State Senator Obama appeared on a panel discussing the play after its conclusion. This panel also included various individuals who Breitbart alleges had ties to communism. This, he determines, casts much suspicion on Obama. Then there is the fact that the promotional materials for the event misspell Obama’s name, which, the article seems to imply, is more evidence of his sinister designs.

Then Breitbart, having apparently reasoned

The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the President.

goes on to provide us with a synopsis of it. It is rather a disjointed account, but then, I have not seen the play. Perhaps the fault here is not Breitbart’s, but the dramatist’s. And I don’t quite see the part where I am supposed to be horrified at the idea of the Commander-in-Chief to be watching such a play.

The fact that Obama showed up to talk about some play is not terribly damning, in my eyes. It is true that other people, perhaps quite bad people, showed up as well, but when you are State Senator your job is to curry favor within your district, and you cannot help it if it is the one populated by communist sympathizers. Not that I wish to imply I trust Breitbart’s accusations of communism, but I mean that even if he is entirely right, he has still proven nothing about the character of the President.

He fails to provide any information concerning what Obama said on the panel. He gives a plausible account of his whereabouts, but you can only determine so much about someone from that. Especially a politician, who will go anywhere where they have persuadable voters. If this is what their “vetting” of the President is going to be like, I would say that he does not have much to worry about.

2 Comments

    1. I’d have to say that even that’s giving Breitbart too much credit. It’s like character assassination, except it doesn’t even really get to anything that relates to Obama’s character. It’s just a lot of innuendo.

What's your stake in this, cowboy?