Art of the Slam: The Sky is the Limit!

It's time to Break It Down!

When I decided to develop today’s theme, it was almost as though I erased the tape from last week’s post. For some reason as I saw and heard the details of former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich’s latest screed on President Obama, I first envisioned the co-architect of the Contract with America having executed a laser-like slam, befitting the intellectual that his credentials suggest, and even some of his critics insist he is.

In fact, Paul Begala, a Georgetown University Public Policy Professor, currently teaching at the University of Georgia School of Law, Democratic Party Strategist, and frequent CNN Commentator, referred to Gingrich, who holds a Ph.D. from Tulane University, as brilliant, even while he deconstructed the projected Presidential candidate’s latest (with emphasis) attack on President Obama. To fast-track bringing you up to speed, in the event you missed it, Newton (OK, you knew Newt had to come from somewhere), speaking to the conservative National Review, recently slammed President Obama, saying the he is a con man who has a Kenyan Anti-Colonial Worldview. Of course, Mr. Obama would have inherited this supposed sinister Afro-prism from his father, who was born in Kenya.

Dr. Gingrich arrived at this piece of genetics-based evolved brilliance, as a result of reading a Forbes Magazine cover story by Dinesh D’Souza (another Point of Light of the Right Wing), in which the author asserts among other things:

• Our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

In framing the importance of the Forbes article, Gingrich says that “D’Souza has made a stunning insight into Obama’s behavior — the most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

Now as I noted earlier, that this is just the former Speaker’s “latest” slam of the President should be emphasized. In essence, slamming President Obama is an undertaking Mr. Gingrich has elevated to an art form. In last week’s post I listed 10 persons of interest who found their way into the headlines by attacking President Obama. Generously, Newt Gingrich was not one of them. Upon further reflection, that ranks as an oversight of glaring proportion.

Just in case you forgot, the list included:

1. Rush Limbaugh

2. Sean Hannity

3. Glenn Beck

4. Sarah Palin

5. Joe Wilson

6. Jim DeMint

7. Rusty DePass

8. Joe Barton

9. Ben Quayle

10. Ann Coulter

Looking back, in the grand scheme of things, no such list could be complete, absent Newton Leroy Gingrich. Going back to Mr. Obama’ first months in office, Gingrich has lobbed one searing attack after another. A review of his assortment of assaults by verbal grenade includes a litany so varied, I concluded, in “The Art of the Slam: The Sky is the Limit!”

His slams are scathing and consistent; here are 10:

• Most Dangerous President Ever

• Anti-Catholic Values (Re: Notre Dame Commencement Speech)/Gingrich is a recent Catholic convert…an apparent concession to his third wife

• Most radical President in American History

• Clueless; dangerously confused

• Initiating a power grab

• Starting a dictatorship

• As dangerous to American way of life as Nazis and the Soviet Union/Communists

• Secular Socialist (To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine…the title of Mr. Gingrich’s latest book)

• Authentically dishonest; factually insane

• Con man with a Kenyan anti-Colonial worldview

A cynic’s worldview might be, there is no better way for the potential 2012 Presidential candidate to stay near the top of the 24/7 news cycle in politics than to busy himself launching serial attacks on the incumbent. This current slam may in fact smell of that rancid tactic, but it is clearly more; bigger than that.

Yea, this tortuous invective hits multiple hot buttons, including:

• President Obama is not “like us” tenet (anti-Colonial worldview)

• Raises the issue of race (Kenyan)

• Subtly reprises the Muslim question (his father was one)

• Pulls in the Birther argument (Kenyan)

Among items considered conventional wisdom in some circles, two were that, Mr. Gingrich is positioning himself to be counted among the Republican Party’s list of prospects for 2012, and that by representing the conservative, but intellectual element, he would bring more rational discourse to the debate, in place of the pandering to segments that use race and the politics of difference and derision to generate interest and inform debate. Realistically, if "What's past is prologue," indeed, Mr. Gingrich has assured point number one, and simultaneously and dismissively obliterated number two. Too bad; that shapes up as an opportunity lost.

Time has a way of rearranging personal recollections. Moreover losing elections often leaves people bitter, spiteful, and petty. With those key points in mind, I want to stipulate several basic truths. In November, 2008, the electorate of America the Beautiful, voted Barack Obama President of these United States, rather convincingly. His worldview, whatever it is, was shaped by having attended and graduated from Columbia University, and Harvard University Law School. Along the way, he served as President of the Harvard Law Review, and Senator from the State of Illinois. He is a former Professor of Constitutional Law, and an acclaimed author.

Newt Gingrich professes to be enamored with Dinesh D'Souza's propaganda.  He suggests that despite Mr. Obama's heavily influenced, and incredibly successful American experience, the President is influenced in a more dominant way by a man he hardly knew.  For the record, the milestones accumulated by this President would have served to legitimize any if not all of Mr. Obama’s 43 predecessors as having a sufficiently American worldview. Make of that whatever you will or may, as it pertains to both Mr. Gingrich, and President Obama.  

Mr. Gingrich is entitled to his opinions of course. Beyond that, he, Mr. D’Souza, and anyone else from the Republican Right may conjure up as many defamatory theories as their fertile minds can conceive.  Mr. D'Souza, who was once engaged to Ann Coulter, is no stranger to questionable social theory.  He wrote a book in 1995, entitlled The End of Racism, in which he argued segregation was merely a well-meaning attempt by paternalistic whites to help blacks "perform to the capacity of their arrested development." He has urged the repeal of every major civil rights law in the land, including those that allow blacks to sit at lunch counters and use the same water fountains as everyone else.  What a guy!

It is clear that when it comes to President Obama and “The Art of the Slam, the Sky is the Limit!” At the end of the day, as much as the partisan opposition rues it, there is one inescapable fact, already emblazoned in permanent ink on the Tablets of American History: Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States (POTUS).

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com./ A new post is published each Wednesday. For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinesh_D'Souza

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Begala

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C5%A9g%C4%A9_wa_Thiong'o

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIEKA6f5zuw&feature=related

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091305307.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline

http://johnkingusa.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/13/plouffe-slams-gingrichs-line-of-attack/

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS390&=&q=gingrich+calls+obama+a+con+man&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=COLvHopyPTKHDAYWWhgSk7P2vBgAAAKoEBU_Qr2x9

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090420/pl_politico/21445

http://mediamatters.org/research/201005210050

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-30-gingrich-slams-obama-on-bp-gulspill-and-sounds-off-on-climate/

http://www.wisepolitics.com/newt-gingrich-slams-obama-1408.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kjohN5gfs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DTVQTQFC2Y&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXq_t3LR170&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpoiGC-ElYg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESG9IrOjX7c&feature=related

http://www.vidoemo.com/yvideo.php?i=S3YxTmp1cWuRpTXd6UTg&newt-gingrich-slams-obama-on-chavez-handshake=

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1644078/newt_gingrich_slams_press_over_first.html?cat=9

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/246302/gingrich-obama-s-kenyan-anti-colonial-worldview-robert-costa

http://www.amazon.com/Save-America-Stopping-Secular-Socialist-Machine/dp/1596985968

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/05/16/gingrich_on_obamas_secular_socialist_machine.html

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/newt-gingrich-calls-president-obama-naz

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/12/gingrich-obama-kenyan-worldview_n_713686.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129851689

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/gingrich-president-exhibits-kenyan-anti-colonial-behavior/