by Teh Nutroots | It is all right with me if Democrats want to jeer a bit at Obama's choice of a columned venue for his speech. He should have studied more Greek tragedy in college, is all I'm saying---and that goes double for W. The ancient Greeks have much to teach us all about hubris.
In the meantime, Republicans, especially far right wingnuts and John McCain, need to belt up. Here's why:
Barack Obama's appearance in Denver won't be the first convention speech framed by Greek columns.
Republicans who are mocking Obama's appearance haven't mentioned it, but George W. Bush accepted his own nomination in 2004 on a set with a similar neoclassical theme, with columns rising on either side of him, as the pictures above and below show.
Indeed, the Bush set and the Obama sets currently look strikingly similar, with the podium set well in front of the columns, and connected by a path. (Ben Smith)
Gavin at Sadly, No! writes:
The Greek Temple thing has been wafting around the blogs for a little while, and it’s... far beyond the usual, day-to-day right-wing flapdoodle....Now the GOP, apparently running low on ideas and messages or something, has taken it up as an actual complaint.
TBogg says:
Oddly enough, or maybe not, the good folks on the right are giggling themselves stupider than usual because the Democrats are setting up a backdrop for BarAfrika Obambatta's acceptance speech. Sez Special Ed:
That this scales heights of presumptuousness can hardly be refuted. What genius thought of this motif? Probably the same one that concocted Vero Possumus and the Fleeing Eagle. It’s a paean to an ego run amuck — and if American voters wondered about the cult of personality that Obama has inspired, this settles the question and explicitly makes Obama the cult leader.
Greg Sargent says:
The Republican National Committee blasted the news out to reporters under the title "audacity watch." Lots of wingers have been chortling about this, too. We assume the idea, if you can call it that, is to suggest Obama believes he's a Greek god or something like that. You know, celeb meets the ancient Greeks. Get it?
John Cole points out that this is par for the course.
About the ‘Greek Columns’ nonsense that the blogosphere seems consumed with today- have people simply not learned? Sure, the Obama campaign probably thought they were just using something nondescript that every fucking building in DC has, and thought it wouldn’t cause a problem, but what people fail to remember is that no matter what they did, the wingnuts and their surrogates would have a field day no matter what. You really don’t have to read folks like Tom Maguire for too long (and I have been reading him for years) to realize that no matter what the backdrop was, he and others would be mocking it.
If it were nothing but American flags, Tom and others would claim he is really over-doing the patriotism because he knows he is weak on the issue. If it were just a normal stage with a few flags, Tom and others would claim it seems like he is afraid of overdoing the flags because the left-wing base hates America and would be turned off. Heads they win, tails you lose.
So it is Greek columns in the background, and Tom and others are mocking it. I am shocked by this turn of events.
Alex Koppelman thinks someone who is being framed as a hubristic elitist might have done better to pick a different sort of venue.
But Jesse at Pandagon (another h/t to Sadly, No!) has the right response:
What is the proper method for such a presumptuous man as this to accept the nomination of his party? It’s obviously not in any way that a Republican would accept it, because the very acts of hubris that make a man like Obama a foppish dandy dippily doodling his way along to the Oval Office are tamed and converted into powerfully heterosexual normality by the sheer pulsating power of Reaganism. Shall Obama accept the nomination on an upscaled corner stoop, James Clyburn and Maxine Waters shuffling by with a curt, respectful head nod? Should the nomination of the first major party black candidate in America’s history happen in a gloriously reimagined welfare line, where a dolled-up John Kerry dressed as Uncle Sam hands him the welfare check of the $400,000 a year Presidential salary?
Please, you heartland patriots, design the Black Liberal’s Acceptance Speech. And don’t skimp on the Black Power salutes, either. (Funkdaddy Supreme’s House O’ Speech)
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