President Obama turned 50 on August 4 and the media celebrated by making every effort to utterly depress both him and anyone who happened to share the same continent.
From the Daily Times:
Obama turns 50 as gray hair betray political peril
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama turned 50 Thursday, marking a personal milestone that may offer only brief respite from a moment of political peril and rising threats to his bid for second term.
From the Guardian:
Barack Obama enjoys 50th birthday with burgers and banter
Barack Obama has not had much to celebrate in the runup to his 50th birthday, although he must wish his US poll ratings, currently 43% approval, outscored his years. But the US president, who in recent weeks has been battered by a debt standoff that ended with a deal no one liked, seems determined to enjoy the milestone.
“Determined” to enjoy the milestone? Is the Guardian suggesting he should just ignore his birthday? That’s not a politically viable option, as many Muslims do not celebrate birthdays (it’s considered a pagan tradition), which would just provide fodder for those who suspect he has a secret mosque in the White House basement (where George W. Bush kept the bowling alley). Is it really accurate that the guy with a loving wife and two beautiful kids does not have much to celebrate? Sure, his job sucks but that’s true of pretty much everyone who has a job. This is why the pagans or the Smurfs or whoever invented birthdays. It’s a time when you can reflect and say, “Yes, life is bad but at least there is less of it now.”
The New Post managed to link Obama’s birthday to the stock market plunge:
Obama celebrates 50th birthday on day stocks nosedive
WASHINGTON – President Obama celebrated his 50th birthday at the White House last night in celebrity-packed bash where revelers did the electric slide, on a night after Wall Street took steep slide of its own.
This somehow makes me think of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” with Obama and his guests hiding from the recession at a gala ball but the recession shows up uninvited and bankrupts everyone.
FOX took it a step further with its headline: Obama parties with Chris Rock, Jay-Z and Whoopi while Rome burns. There were other guests — some of them even white — but it keeps to the narrative to call out the angry black guy, the rapper, and the black woman who is not Halle Berry.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also took issue with the celebration:
“Right now our economy is in the ditch,” Priebus said, juxtaposing the pricey party against a national dilemma. He added the President is “in love with sound of his own voice.”
I have seen the adult film of Obama and his own voice on Cinemax (purely for research purposes, of course) and it was pretty filthy. So, according to Priebus, Obama is the only rich guy in America we can attack for enjoying life while the rest of the country feasts on stale ramen noodles without it being “class warfare.”
GOP presidential candiate Mitt Romney’s birthday tribute for Obama was a video detailing how he is basically worse for Chicago than Capone. The math is curious but apparently the 2% of policies that Obama manages to squeak past the Republicans is what’s destroying the nation.
Really, is this where we are now? We can’t let the guy celebrate his birthday? There’s no August 4th cease fire? Feuding nations do better than this.
Fortunately, the New York Times was able to put things in perspective:
CHICAGO — For many men, turning 50 can be a day of reckoning, marked by graying hair, a slowing step and the wistful recognition that you are probably never going to make it to the corner office. What could be better, at such a melancholy moment, than to celebrate at home, among old friends?
Geez! Is this a news article or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”? This is worse than having dinner with a morose Jerry Seinfeld.
Mr. Obama, whose youth and relative inexperience were used against him in the 2008 election, has aged visibly, most noticeably in his hair color, now less salt-and-pepper than a generous dusting of salt. After two and a half years in which he soldiered through the Great Recession and sent a Seal team to assassinate Osama bin Laden, this president stopped seeming young a long time ago.
Yes, Obama won the presidency, steered the country through difficult economic times, and ordered the assasination of bin Laden but he still needs Just for Men and thus his entire life is a failure. I wonder how the author of this piece would teach history.
“So, Winston Churchill saved the world from Hitler but then he got fat and died, so what’s the point?” This would be similar to his lecture on Elvis’s impact on rock and roll.
Fortunately, the Business Insider knows how to celebrate a birthday and put together this slide show that allows you to watch Obama age before your eyes. Time to go roll up your trousers and hang yourself.
serhasacomplaint 