{"id":13364,"date":"2007-10-25T16:00:28","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T20:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13364.html"},"modified":"2007-10-25T16:00:28","modified_gmt":"2007-10-25T20:00:28","slug":"from-lapel-pins-to-the-pledge-of-allegiance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/from-lapel-pins-to-the-pledge-of-allegiance\/","title":{"rendered":"From lapel pins to the Pledge of Allegiance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sweet Jeebus, it’s amazing<\/i> what the right will find to whine about. When it comes to Barack Obama, first it was his middle name. Then it was the “madrassa” nonsense. Soon after, it was the absence of a flag pin<\/a> on his lapel. And now, the Fox News crowd is fascinated by whether the senator puts his hand over his heart when he says the Pledge of Allegiance.<\/p>\n

Just when it seemed far-right discourse couldn’t get any more inane, these guys manage to kick things up a notch.<\/p>\n

Time magazine ran a photo<\/a> recently of Obama, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, and Ruth Harkin (Sen. Tom Harkin’s wife) at an event in Iowa. Richardson, Clinton, and Harkin are seen with their hands over their hearts, while Obama’s hands are clasped together in front of him. The caption said the picture was taken “during the national anthem.”<\/p>\n

And that, apparently, was all the right needed to know. Freepers pounced<\/a>, denouncing Obama for being unpatriotic. Newsbusters, another far-right site, did the same<\/a>, and challenged reporters to ask Obama about his “decision to spurn this American tradition.”<\/p>\n

This is all very<\/em> silly. For one thing, we don’t know if, a moment after the picture was taken, Obama put his hand over his heart like the others. For another, it doesn’t matter<\/i>. Some people do, some don’t. It’s hardly the kind of thing that the patriotism police should obsess over.<\/p>\n

But that didn’t stop Fox News from devoting plenty of airtime<\/a> to what one personality called Obama’s “patriotism problems.” Seriously.
\n<\/p>\n

On October 23, two other programs — Fox News’ Fox & Friends and the CBS-syndicated newsmagazine Inside Edition — also featured segments on Obama not covering his heart during the national anthem. As Media Matters documented, on the October 23 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy stated: “First he kicked his American flag pin to the curb. Now Barack Obama has a new round of patriotism problems.” Doocy’s assertion echoed a statement made by the conservative blog NewsBusters, which noted in an October 20 post that Time magazine had photographed Obama without his hand over his heart during the national anthem: “Turns out that not wearing a flag lapel pin isn’t the only way Barack Obama chooses to show he’s a different kind of Democrat.” Inside Edition also featured a segment discussing Obama and the national anthem “controversy” on October 23. The segment included a statement from an Obama campaign spokesperson regarding Obama’s purported failure to place his hand over his heart: “Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. In no way was he making any sort of statement, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Hannity & Colmes, Alan Colmes had the wherewithal to show an image of George W. Bush during the Pledge, and his right hand wasn’t over his heart. Does that mean his patriotism should be questioned? Hannity said no: “[T]he difference here is Barack Obama made a statement about the Iraq war with the flag pin. And to not do it here, people are raising questions about why. Is this another statement?”<\/p>\n

It’s almost hard to believe how ridiculous these people are. There are pictures of Obama saying the Pledge with his hand over his heart; there are pictures without. The same is true for the president. This is meaningless<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I wonder if these far-right ideologues realize that getting worked up over such nonsense makes them<\/em> look bad, not the target of their ire. Somehow, I doubt it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sweet Jeebus, it’s amazing what the right will find to whine about. When it comes to Barack Obama, first it was his middle name. Then it was the “madrassa” nonsense. Soon after, it was the absence of a flag pin on his lapel. And now, the Fox News crowd is fascinated by whether the senator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}