UNDER-REPORTED: Character To Lead

     As a strict constructionist who believes deeply in the right to free speech enshrined in our Federal and State (North Carolina) Constitutions, I fully support the right of President Obama to say the following things about the following groups of people.  

     As a believer that a free press is our most important bulwark against tyranny, I contend that the media has done a poor job on reporting these comments and their possible implications regarding the character of our president and his fitness to lead.

            

     As catalogued by Victor Davis Hanson, President Obama has said the following at various times during his presidency or his campaign for that office:

African Americans: “Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’.”

Americans: Are “not a model for the world” and have a “tragic history.” Also, “we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” and, more recently, we have gotten “a little soft” and lost our “competitive edge.”

Bankers: “Fat cats”

Border enforcement: Its overzealous adherents want “alligators and moats” on the border and would arrest children on their way to get ice cream.

The Cambridge, Mass., police: “Acted stupidly” and, like law-enforcement officers in general, racially profile.

Corporate-jet owners: “Are you willing to compromise your kids’ safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break?”

Democratic base: Must “shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up . . . if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Doctors: Needlessly chop off the limbs of diabetics and take out tonsils to increase their own profits.

Donald Trump: A “carnival barker”

Grandmother: “Typical white person”

Las Vegas: Where you are likely to “blow a bunch of cash when you’re trying to save for college”

Millionaires: They don’t pay their “fair share” and are synonymous with those who have 1,000 times more.

Nancy Reagan: Don’t “get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any séances.”

Rural Pennsylvanians: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment.”

Sarah Palin: “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”

Special Olympics: Comparable to the president’s dismal bowling scores

Super Bowl: Where you go “on the taxpayer’s dime”

Supreme Court: Would “open the floodgates for special interests”

Supreme Court Justice Thomas: “I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don’t think that he, I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation.”

Tea Party: “The teabag, anti-government people”