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Last night we saw life imitate art.
To be absolutely honest and arrogant at the same time, two different mediums of art were involved.
Playing the role of life was the second presidential debate. In this particular reason to skip watching the Yankees get beat (that’s a good thing), we saw two candidates trade verbal jabs with each other in near desperate attempts to lure the undecided electorate over to their side. It didn’t qualify as complete desperation because there was no erotic knitting or other hanky panky involved.
Truths were exaggerated.
Lies were told.
One of them was a whopper.
I’m not talking about the flame broiled hamburger or malted milk ball either.
I’m talking about a lie.
It started with the President’s claim that he referred to the events in Benghazi on September 11th as an act of terror as early as the day after it happened. This contradicts everything that’s been said on the right that the man waited for two weeks before calling it terrorism.
Mittens (R-MA) called attention to the inconsistency in the claim and the truth, but didn’t invoke traditional Lincoln-Douglas town hall debate rules to nail Obama’s ass to the wall with it.
“Please proceed, Governor.”
In fact, the look on Romney’s face showed his shock that Zaphod had actually uttered the words he just did. All things being equal, it was a WTF look on his face.
You know what WTF stands for, don’t you?
“Why That Face?”
I’ll come back to Obama’s claim about labeling the event as terrorism in a moment.
The roll of art in last night’s event had two players.
The first one was me when I suggested the following in a blog I had written less than an hour before the gloves came off at Hofstra.
….Here in the 21st century where news travels as fast as it can be loaded to the internet and the 24 hour new cycle reigns supreme, the bold faced lies which escape the collective pie holes of any politician who displays the audacity to utter them can be fact checked instantaneously. Sadly, the polarized nature of today’s political landscape dictate fact checkers for the fact checkers. The second Presidential debate takes place in about an hour. I expect plenty of concepts to be nailed on the head, and plenty of lies as well.
I know what you’re thinking.
For me to pen a prediction that lies would be told in the debate last night was quite profound. If only those predictions worked for me and lottery tickets.
The second player in the roll of art during last night’s event was Colonel Nathan R. Jessup.
In the movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson plays the bad guy being grilled in a Court Marshal proceeding by Tom Cruise. Throughout the proceeding, Cruise has used all of the gifts bestowed upon him by Xenu to get Jessup (Nicholson) to sack up and admit that he’s ordered an aggressive hazing known as a Code Red to be performed on one of his soldiers. Every argument which Cruise presents to prove Jessup’s guilt gets thrown back in his face.
But then, the line of questioning changes a bit. I’ll paraphrase:
Cruise: Your men follow your orders. Correct?
Jessup: Yup.
Cruise: They never fail to follow them?
Jessup: Nope.
Cruise: And you ordered all of your men to leave Santiago alone?
Jessup: Yup.
Cruise: Then why did any of your men touch him if they were under orders not to do so?
Hilarity and an Oscar nod (I think) then ensued. Jessup goes all apeshit on Cruise, threatens him, and still fails to see what he did wrong. In the meantime, additional degrees of Kevin Bacon are achieved.
“Please proceed, Governor.”
So now that we know all of the players in this questionably casted charade, let’s get to the point where I make one.
First, let’s discuss the lie.
In the White House Rose Garden, following the attack in Benghazi, Obama made reference to “acts of terror”. He did not specifically characterize what had happened 24 hours before as an act of terror. He appears to have been speaking in general.
That’s one way to look at it. The best response he could give to that argument was that his detractors are playing games with semantics and miscontextualizations (red squiggly line aside, I’m pretty sure that’s a word).
Let’s assume that’s the case and Obama actually did refer to the Benghazi attack as terroristic in nature.
Over the next two weeks when he was asked point blank whether the act was terrorism, why did he respond with “we’re still investigating that”? Why did he keep floating the mantra that it was a spontaneous riot inspired by that stupid ass video on YouTube in that same time period? Why did he and Hillary Clinton go on Pakistani television with advertisements that they blamed the video? Why did his minions go on the talk shows blaming the video?
If in all that time the Benghazi attack was being characterized and investigated as an act of terrorism, why on God’s green Earth did they not come out and call it terrorism?
Come on Zaphod. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can’t turn around and blame Goofy for being a talking dog.
Yeah, that was a lame metaphor.
Since Obama refused to call it terrorism for a few weeks, I’m pretty convinced the President was lying with that remark last night.
That’s where Colonel Nathan R. Jessup comes in.
Obama was already on edge last night by the time he uttered that remark. When Romney called attention to the lie, Obama’s body language and demeanor changed to one I haven’t seen in him before. His spine appeared to have jumped ship because he was no longer sitting up straight. He became a little meek at the same time. I expect some of that was out of an effort to hide his anger, but still.
The man was on edge.
So much so, that I would suggest to you right here and now that if Romney had pursued the line of questioning that I presented earlier, our 44th President would have channeled Colonel Nathan R. Jessup in the most brilliant and colorful of manners.
Of this, I have no doubt.
“Please proceed, Governor.”
