You can always tell when there’s a midterm or presidential election right around the corner. Many of the usual pests crawl out from the floor-boards and inject themselves into the discourse just long enough to sell a book or release another polemical documentary. Yesterday it was Michael Moore who leaned heavily on the over-worked “Disappointed in Obama” button — the same old narrow-minded whining we’ve heard over and over for the last six years.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about Moore’s Roger & Me, Moore was asked about whether Obama was telling the truth when he said he “saved Detroit.” Of course when the administration uses the phrase “saved Detroit,” it’s referring to the American auto-industry and not the city itself. But of course Moore deliberately took the phrase literally and said:
I wrote him a letter, and I said: Dear President Obama, God bless you, but you did not save Detroit. You saved General Motors. You saved Chrysler.
Well, that’s exactly what anyone means when they’re referring to “Detroit” in the context of the auto industry. Was he supposed to save the entire city? Is that a president’s job? Of course not, but that’s never stopped Moore and others from ginning up artificially lofty expectations for the Obama presidency. Saving the American auto industry is a massive success, but just because he didn’t save the entire city means he’s a big fat disappointment. Why? Because it’s the hip thing to do — to scold the president because he didn’t [fill in the blank] — I don’t know, he didn’t personally invent jetpacks made of bacon. Thanks, Obama. You might’ve rescued the economy from collapsing into a Second Great Depression, but nope, no bacon jetpacks. Disappointing.
It gets worse… CONTINUE READING