House of Eratosthenes

It’s particularly damaging when a message about gas prices can be distilled down to bumper sticker length. Generally, as people gaze out over where bumper stickers are displayed, they are likely to have had cause to think about gas prices sometime in the last few minutes…and are cranky and irritable, someplace they’d rather not be.

Of course you don’t have to be too plugged in to current events, to understand I deserve very little credit for this; about as much as…well…as Obama deserves for taking down Osama. Credit goes to Maha Rushie.

Why is Obama getting so little help from this boobie-prize of taking down Osama? Why such a short-lived and inconsequential bump? Why so little lift?

It’s clear to me, the problem is with this ill-advised bandying-about of this clumsy word, “gutsy.” Just noodle that over in your noggin for a little while, casually, and you’ll see how bad this sounds. Obama made a decision, and the decision, in intent and in outcome, was beneficial to the interests of the country over which Obama presides. It is the first decision He’s made in office that fulfills these criteria. I’ll state it again: The intent, and the outcome, were in harmony with what is good for the country. In the Obama universe, that is “gutsy.”

Had George Bush made the same call, they wouldn’t be using that word. That could be explained, partially, by the obvious fact that “they” are people who like to see Obama succeed and Bush fail. “Gutsy” is a positive adjective, therefore it applies to Obama and not to Bush.

But that doesn’t explain all of it.

Obama-makes-gutsy-call is something of a man-bites-dog story. “Teh Won” is not known for making gutsy calls, He is known for voting “present.” What other gutsy calls has He made? There’ve been some, you could say — but they help Obama and not the country.

Shouldn’t a “gutsy” decision involve some kind of alternative choice? It seems there should be some other-path that could have been pursued, and would have been pursued, by some ineffectual middle-management suck-up…which would have deprived the country, or the charge of the stewardship of the suck-up, of some appealing outcome over the long term, but would have left the short-term prospects of the suck-up entirely whole, unscathed and unblemished. A “gutsy” decision-maker, I think, should be selecting some avenue of execution that poses a danger to his reputation but is the better option for whatever he is managing. This seems, to me, self-evident. I think we all get it…

…and yet Obama’s “call” is considered “gutsy.”

See, I think it’s a ‘fessing-up that this is not something Obama would be expected to do. It’s a non-pussy-pacifist decision, a decision that is good for Obama and the United States of America. It’s also a decision pretty much anybody else would have made — although, as we grope for some possible exceptions to that absolute statement, we all first look back to the history of presidents from Barack Obama’s party. (Clinton? Carter?)

So I think deep down, everybody understands when the adjective “gutsy” is used in this context, the word that is really meant is “unexpected,” and maybe “surreal.” And so it is implicitly understood: You can’t say, from this event, that you can just throw some Barack Obama at any new problem & walk away worry-free. If that was the case, “gutsy” wouldn’t be the word. Now: What exactly got FDR elected four times?

Also, “gutsy” calls should be likely to make new enemies. They should pack a potential to make an enemy out of someone the maker of the call wouldn’t normally want to piss off.

Who, among Obama’s friends, is thinking about becoming His enemy because He decided to lower the boom on Osama bin Laden? It just naturally opens up a re-examination of all the questions that John McCain wasn’t…er…gutsy enough to go asking about three years ago. Through this innocuous, two-syllable descriptor, we’re left with a new curiosity about Obama’s connections, a curiosity which is in fact not new at all, just reawakening from a slumber of dormancy.

It’s “gutsy” in that it was apparently an assassination mission.

Given the sad, sad state of the hardcore left — i.e. the guys Obama will definitely need 100% voter turnout among to drag him over the 2012 finish line — that actually did take balls. You’d expect even a kumbayah, we-are-the-world pussy like Obama to order an incursion. Even Jimmy Carter did that, fer chrissakes. What’s shocking is that the SEALs apparently were ordered to just cap the motherfucker. You’d think Obama would just love to put Osama on trial; targeted killings are sooooo George W. Bush.

[Frankly, I suspect that the orders really were to capture Osama if possible, and that some judicious SEAL commander somewhere down the chain of command let his boys know, very hush-hush, that we’re bringing back a corpse or nothing.]
- Severian | 05/17/2011 @ 14:24
Your [bracketed] theory is interesting. I’m allowing my own corporate experiences to cloud my prejudices here, somewhat on purpose, since it’s better to speculate from what one knows than from what one does not know. According to that, then, it’s a toss-up between that…and Obama & the inner circle understanding the bullet-in-the-head thing has to get done, but trying, trying, trying to find some alternative to it. To the point of looking quite silly and absurd. Then trying a couple more times. Then resigning to the inevitable. I’ve seen many weak-willed bosses go through that little dance, and I can envision it easily. Besides of which it explains the “Mister Glowerpuss” crouching in the corner in that famous photo.

Of course the corporate world isn’t about SEAL missions and skull-capping terrorist bosses, so I could be way off base with this. Anyway. That’s from the knowledge-base I have.
- mkfreeberg | 05/17/2011 @ 14:40
I think you’re probably more right than I am (I’ve seen that type of decision making a lot in corporate too). When it comes to Teh Won, though, I just can’t help but think, “what would a radical socialist ideologue do in this given situation?” Given the political reality — it would leak that Obama had a shot at Obama but let him go — he had to do something… but what?

As I say, you’re probably more right than I. But the WWKMD (What Would Karl Marx Do?) metric works more often than not with this guy, God help us.
- Severian | 05/17/2011 @ 17:07

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Tuesday, May 17th, 2011