Pres. Barack (Barry Soetoro) Obama is not a liar, unless if by "liar" we mean someone who does not always tell the truth.But that is not really the meaning of liar. A liar can tell the truth and yet does not become a "truther" (honest person) for doing so. Of course, Obama has lied lots of times; he's a lawyer. But more often, he does something else.
As long as he leaves himself the out of plausible deniability, who can accuse him of knowing that what he says is untrue?
If he's reading the teleprompter, the scriptwriters are lying. He's a hired mouthpiece (all those corporate campaign donations), a handsome and compelling figurehead. Barry is no Dick Cheney, but he does give Donald "There are Known Unknowns" Rumsfeld a run for his money.
Here's how he tells the truth: Recently, Ben Smith on Politico.com pointed out the subtle way Obama is skirting the truth:
After, not during
Amid some inconsistencies in early Administration and media accounts of Osama bin Laden's death, a reader points out that President Obama himself was always -- if very subtly -- clear that the terrorist was not killed in a shootout.Indeed, two pieces of language that seem more consistent with Bin Laden's being shot and killed deliberately -- as, in some reports, was the goal of the mission -- than in his being shot "resisting," as if in some kind of police action.
Obama said Sunday night:
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
The key word there is "after," not "during," and it matches the revised White House account. You had to be listening extremely carefully the first night to catch that nuance.
In less formal remarks last night, Obama offered a similar sequence, describing "an operation that resulted in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden." "Capture and death."
Misleading ManHe leaves himself an out. He can say, "I didn't say that."
We Americans are not known for our memory, nor are we interested in "boring" politics or economics (even when it's our taxes and credit card bills). But we love sex. So people probably remember an old president named Bill Clinton.
Who cares why the Republicans were after him trying to balance the black eye (Dick Nixon) they wear and hope to cure by having a Democrat resigning or being impeached. What we care about is sex, namely, his fling with Jewish American princess Monica Lewinsky that caused the Tailgate scandal. [Insert your own joke here, snicker-snicker.]
He lied about it, but the lie was implicit. (He amused us greatly by his sophistry explaining that it was not perjury). We don't normally call that lying to people, just misleading them.
Pres. Obama misleads us. He does it all the time. It seems to be the job of politicians. Even when he is denying Birthers, listen to what he says: He jokes that they're right.
He chooses his language very carefully, making pronouncements as if they are definitive statements.
But they are rule violations in language (there's a technical name for it in psychology and linguistics) that are true as stated but lies as understood. Our Great (Mis-)Leader couches what he says in implicit messages. And in that sense, Pres. Obama is not a liar.
He's the greatest misleader of our time. I once heard a speech by Hitler, the Fuhrer. It was a PBS-style breakdown of a speech pointing out that, as good as Hitler was at delivering speeches, he didn't say much.
(NOTE TO SELF: The secret of popular discourse -- don't say much). In one telling example -- just before the crowd erupted into a series of "USA! USA! US... I mean, Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! -- the Fuhrer said something to the effect "And Germany will stamp out unemployment by creating jobs!"
How else is unemployment ever stamped out? But in the heat of the moment as an oratorical flourish, the crowd fills in the blanks. In the heat of the moment, we hear Pres. Obama lying but all he's doing is misleading.
His language is correct. A judge in a trial would not hold him to the "lie" everyone heard. Even when he restates and looks into the camera to tell it straight, he does it again. It's magic. Prior to Ben Smith's analysis, we never noticed.
O, Obama, did you have to lie to us, too? We might as well elect someone who's easier on the eyes like right wing tea drinker Caribou Barbie, because if wanted a misleader we would have elected a misleader.
- Wisdom Quarterly is in full agreement with Prof. Cornell West and talkshow host Tavis Smiley: If Obama is to be great, we have to drag him kicking and screaming to his greatest. We have to hold his feet to the fire for otherwise, like so many leaders before him, he will devolve into hypocrisy and regret.
- 7 most common gestures of lying
WASHINGTON, DC (March 17, 2010) – Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress yesterday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.
Interesting how he could be so sure. In testy exchanges with House Republicans, the attorney general compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson.
Then he predicted that events would ensure "we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden" not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive.