On That Gettysburg Snub - With A Local Connection!

Much has been written in the last few days about President Obama and his "snubbing" of the ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.  CNN's Ashley Killough even posted this analysis of that decision:

As Pennsylvania gears up to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address on Tuesday, one prominent Abraham Lincoln fan won't be in attendance: President Barack Obama.

The National Park Service announced a few weeks ago the President won't be part of the activities commemorating the historic speech, and critics have since assailed Obama for skipping the event.

And who's the first critic assailing Obama?  The Trib's own Selena Zito:

"It would be an occasion for him to honor a crucial time in our past, to create a historical bridge to today," Salena Zito, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review staff writer, wrote in a column.

"His dismissal of the request shows a man so detached from the duty of history, from the men who served in the White House before him, that it is unspeakable in its audacity," Zito added. "Ask almost any person in this historic town; even his most ardent supporters here are stunned." [Emphasis added.]

Missing, of course, from Zito's column is any sort of historical context - an omission also found in some of the regular news coverage of the event at the Trib.  Here's Mike Wereschagin:

Several of the new citizens said they'd been told President Obama would attend the ceremony. Instead, a National Park Ranger read a brief speech from the president and a message he recorded for the 16 new citizens was played.

Obama's decision not to appear “made him look bad,” said Mike Wood, 39, of Chesterfield, Mich. He should have come “just to show his respect,” said Wood, a re-enactor with the 7th Michigan Cavalry and author of the nonfiction Civil War book “Tuebor.”

And what was this omission of context?  Take a look:

But Obama's decision not to attend the Gettysburg commemoration ceremony is typical for a sitting president. President Reagan did not attend the 125th commemoration of the Gettysburg Address - in fact, Reagan never visited Gettysburg during his tenure in office. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton also never visited the battlefield as president, and President George W. Bush toured the site in 2008, but did not speak or attend a commemoration ceremony. In fact, according to Hanover, Pennsylvania's local paper, The Evening Sun, William Howard Taft was the only sitting president to ever visit the site on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address

That's right - Ronald Wilson Reagan never visited Gettysburg during his entire tenure in office and didn't attend the 125th commemoration of the speech.

Can we get that Civil War re-enactor declare that it made Reagan "look bad" by not showing?  Or  how it shows Reagan's disrespect?  Can we get Selena Zito to go on record saying that Reagan's unspeakably audacious failure to attend the 125th commemoration shows his detachment from the duty of history, from the men who served in the White House before him?

Yea, I didn't think so either.

Late This Morning

Birthers, Tea Partiers and Fox News viewers everywhere are stunned in disbelief:

While you're waiting to hear from the Supremes...

James Fallows of The Atlantic has a few choice words on our long-term coup:

Normally I shy away from apocalyptic readings of the American predicament. We're a big, messy country; we've been through a lot -- perhaps even more than we thought, what with Abraham Lincoln and the vampires. We'll probably muddle through this and be very worried about something else ten years from now. But when you look at the sequence from Bush v. Gore, through Citizens United, to what seems to be coming on the health-care front; and you combine it with ongoing efforts in Florida and elsewhere to prevent voting from presumably Democratic blocs; and add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we'd identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.**

You can read the whole article here.

(h/t to Spork)

Both sides don't do it

While you can find any number of examples of protesters, celebrities, etc. being less than respectful of a U.S. President, as well as a lesser number of examples of journalists aggressively questioning a U.S. President at a presser, during an interview, or just yelling questions out as he walks by, here's what you don't see:

You've never seen a Democratic member of Congress yelling out "You lie!" during a State of the Union address given by a Republican President:


You've never seen a Democratic Governor out in public wagging their finger inches from a Republican President's face:


And, you've never seen some lefty reporter screaming at a Republican President in the middle of a major speech (or any prepared remarks):


Yet, somehow the Teahadists simply can't or won't control themselves around this President -- not enough to display even the most basic, minimum level of respect for the Office of the Presidency. (Much in the same way that they can't help but bring out the Confederate flag at their protests no matter how bad it makes them look.) I guess there's just something different about Obama...

Obama Derangement Syndrome - Trib Style

From today's Thursday Wrap:

And speaking of Mr. Obama, the commander in chief told a Denver TV station that he's "proud generally" of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Now there's a stand-up guy. We suppose his supporters, based on the latest polls, are no less proud, generally, of him.

As with everything else on Scaife's editorial page, what the braintrust leaves out tells us much more than what it decides you should read.