MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2026
Did he possibly get it right? This morning, we posted some of the lowlights of Saturday morning's three-headed review of the Obama Presidential Center.
We refer to the screeching, screaming, gong-show behavior of the three co-hosts of the Fox & Friends Weekend program. We're inclined to think that Griff Jenkins knows better. The other two, not so much.
In fairness, no one was pictured as an ape this day. No one said that Michelle Obama is a man, or that Barack Obama is gay.
One extremely strange star in the channel's prime time lineup toys with the latter two themes on a semi-regular basis, but no one did that on Fox & Friends Weekend this week.
On the other hand, the dim-witted messaging flowed like the waters of a mighty stream. As we showed you this morning, eternal teen-ager Charlie Hurt was soon dishing this:
JENKINS: ...President Obama's Presidential Center, which opened up on the South Side of Chicago, has been panned as a bit of an ugly structure.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: It would have been like a death star—
JENKINS: What do you call it?
CAMPOS-DUFFY: I call it the North Korean watchtower. Charlie likes to call it a garbage can.
HURT: It does, because it looks like a public park, and it's in a public park. So it looks like one of those trash cans in a public park. You just walk in and shove your entire, all your McDonald's garbage, like right through the panel and then you just drop it.
It looks like a place where you'd shove all your garbage! All in all, it can sometimes seem like it's "garbage in, garbage out" on this tribal messaging program.
As we noted, some or most architecture critics—not all—have panned the external design of the center's main building. But on Fox & Friends Weekend, when Barack Obama's name is mentioned, the Fox News Channel "conservative insult culture" is likely to take instant hold.
The new building looks like a trash can, Hurt later said.
Again—no one was called an ape, and no one was called a man! Also, is it possible that Charlie Hurt—screaming and yelling, as you can easily see—was actually noting a questionable part of the Blue American political playbook when he screamed and screeched in the manner shown below?
JENKINS (6/20/26): You know, it's interesting, by the way—the whole ceremony began with Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser, and she started the whole ceremony by recognizing stolen land.
Charlie?
HURT (shouting): Why'd they build it there, then, if it's on stolen land? Give it baaaack! [Briefly inaudible] the building is already there! And you can't tear the building down!
You literally built it on land that you're crying about being stolen! Give it baaaaaack!
And so on from there. It was quite a "journalistic" performance.
The co-host was unmistakably screeching. It ought to be a national emergency when news clowns behave like that on major "cable news" shows. On the other hand, is it possible that Hurt might be arguably possibly somewhat right?
We noticed several analysts cringe when Jarrett delivered the "land acknowledgement." They told us that "land acknowledgements" are empty gestures performed in bad faith from which there's only one result:
Every time we Blues deliver a land acknowledgement, these fiery young analysts cried, another ten thousand Trump voters are said to get their wings,
We'll admit that we were surprised to see Jarrfett deliver the acknowledgment. We'd like to see more attention paid to the histories and the present circumstances of indigenous / native / first people tribes.
That said, these gestures do strike us as blatantly phony, pretty much all the way down. "You can only imagine how these gestures look to Others," one young analyst cried.
The friends seemed to think that the youngster was right! Hurt screeched and screamed as he and Campos-Duffy mocked the gesture.
Could it be that we the Blues sometimes defeat ourselves?
The key for "the Blues" is to never say anything that might somehow be construed as an affront to the sensibilities of straight white people, who are presumably so empty-headed and easily triggered that they'll jump into Trump's lap to punish said affront.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, far-right parties are gaining traction throughout the Western world, even in places where they have no "indigenous populations" or "stolen lands" to use as an excuse.
Here’s the incongruity of Somerby: if we “blues” fail to discuss Gutfeld’s latest misogynistic pronouncements, that means we “blues” tolerate said misogyny.* But if we note and call out the obvious racism going on, that’s bad and offends right wingers. It looks like some sort of double standard.
ReplyDelete*Talarico was all over MSNOW responding to charges he is “effeminate”; also, the “Michelle Obama is a man” comment was also dealt with by, among others, Warnock. But damn, he might have said something about “racism” during the course of that interview, so I guess he is or will be contributing to our election problems.
Land recognition statements are not empty gestures performed in bad faith by those who care about getting along with indigenous people, which includes all of us who live in states with large Indian populations, tribes with recognized rights, and places with a history of past atrocities. For us, those statements are routine but they are also important to all of us.
ReplyDeleteThis is the inclusivity part of DEI. It recognizes that we wouldn't be able to build presidential libraries on Chicago land had there not been a sacrifice by the original occupants (residents) of that land. When I lived in Chicago, I lived in Uptown. There was a nearby urban Indian center for those members of the local tribes who were living in the city instead of on their reservation. They were part of the community in that neighborhood. The center helped relocating Indians find jobs and provided a support system for those who were away from their families.
Right wingers may not see indigenous people as real people, descendents of those killed in Indian wars by men like Sherman (the name of a street in Chicago), just as Obama represents black people descended from slaves brought from Africa to America to work on plantations, ultimately fleeing their enslavement and moving to Chicago to avoid Jim Crow laws and find jobs,. Chicago works as a major city because it respects and includes all people regardless of ethnicity and national origin (Polish, German, Greek, Irish, Hispanics settling out of the migrant farmworking stream).
Somerby's fatuous conceit that these land ceremonies are "performative" reflects the poverty of his own view of America as a land of many people, built by many hands. For some of us, that land ceremony is a reassurance by our local Indian tribes that we are forgiven and invited to participate upon the land as part of a collective. We don't sleep through such ceremonies, the way Trump sleeps through everything important to our nation these days. Somerby's vague attempt to mock the ceremony shows disrespect for Indians but also those who care about our history together. Not only do many Western states perform such ceremonies, but so does Canada.
Somerby has perhaps never been to South Dakota, where Lakota are an important constituency. Land ceremonies are not "phony" there.
DeleteTrump is trying to kill off the American bison by removing them from public lands, despite their being indigenous wildlife tied closely to Indian culture, so maybe he thinks indigenous people shouldn't live either, but that is just another reason why these right wingers are truly awful.
What I don't get is why Somerby sides with them. His attitude toward a sincere expression of gratitude to Indians for our use of the land, strikes me as selfish, ignorant, and piggish. Projecting that attitude onto the rest of us who experience these ceremonies routinely where we live, calling us phony, shows that Somerby is not much of a liberal and definitely more of an asshole.
Would Somerby walk into a Catholic church and call the people at that service a bunch of phonies, suggesting that they don't actually believe the liturgy? I get it that Somerby has no respect himself, but would that justify the kind of behavior he is showing here? This is wrong, the ugly side of right wing behavior. If they don't believe it, it is not worth believing, Somerby seems to be saying.
"You can only imagine how these gestures look to Others," one young analyst cried."
Delete@6:08 suggests how Somerby and his analysts look to real Democrats and liberals and progressives, not to mention indigenous people (who may be Republicans or Democrats).
The so-called Others show no empathy or understanding for other people. Somerby demands that we care about how we look to them, yet they never care how they look to us. Those Others are the ones the rest of us are going around apologizing for.
Look how Trump treated Meloni and the Italian people this past week. His behavior should have embarrassed The Others and they should have issued apologies for his lies and disparagement of their Prime Minister.
That land recognition ceremony is needed because of the past misbehavior like today's Others. The Others don't appreciate the use of the land and they don't appreciate that the rest of us must apologize for their mistakes either. So why does Somerby say we must worry even the slightest amount about how we look to them. They don't deserve such consideration.
I am going to take the commenters suggestions though and consider every real-life dumpster to be a symbolic representation of the right wing and its contribution to our society. I finally get it that Trump has been throwing away the silverware so that right wingers doing their dumpster diving don't have to eat with their fingers. But I say, fingers are good enough for Others. They wouldn't know what to do with plastic forks much less silver.
Is Somerby aware that Mary Peltola, running for Senate in Alaska after serving as U.S. Representative in Congress, is herself native American? She is highly likely to win and add to the senate Democrats. How do you suppose she feels about the land ceremony?
Delete"Born Mary Sattler, Peltola is Yup'ik from the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta in Western Alaska.[11][12] She was born in Anchorage on August 31, 1973.[13][14] Her Yup'ik name is Akalleq (transl. the one who rolled).[15][16] Peltola's father, Ward Sattler, a German-American from Nebraska, moved to Alaska to work as a pilot and teacher.[17][18] Her mother, Elizabeth "LizAnn" Piicigaq Williams, is Yup'ik from Kwethluk."
Or do only Christians count? Is Somerby ready to say that?
Bob, you're barely scraping the surface of the mockery that the Obama Presidential Liberal is generating for us Reds. Here's a couple of headlines from the Babylon Bee that are worth a chuckle:
ReplyDeleteObama Library Cruelly Disenfranchises Millions Of Black Americans By Requiring Photo ID For Entry
'Now Witness The Firepower Of This Fully Armed And Operational Battle Station,' Cackles Obama
Next time you visit Chicago, take the Architectural Boat Tour. They will fill you in on the history of the buildings along the Chicago river and explain the innovations and changes in styles across time.
DeleteI have friends who walk through a Modern Art museum and comment that they could have made the exhibits themselves, with no sense of what the artists are expressing or the skill involved in a work that only seems odd to them. That is a sign of ignorance, not taste. The same is true of Obama's new library. If those on the right do not appreciate the architect's intentions and vision, that is on them.
Who else called modern art degenerate? Hitler. So you right wingers are marching in goose-step formation with these jabs at Obama's building.
This idea that the building looks like a Death Star ignores that it is not round, has writing on the outside, is building-colored not gray, is not in outer space, has no weapons, and is not symmetrical in shape. So, you guys don't really care about any similarities or lack of them, but just engage in name-calling. Trump doesn't even know who the good guys and the bad guys are in Star Wars, given that he created a meme of himself with the wrong colored light sabre.
Morons laughing at each other's moronic jokes are about the speed on the right. You guys probably think Obama's library is full of books.
Shouldn't Somerby be providing a better education for his analysts, or is he selecting them for their ignorance?
ReplyDeleteI am making a good salary from home $4580-$5240/week , which is amazing under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now its my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone,
ReplyDeleteHere is I started_______ Homeprofit1.site
Somerby needs to moderate his blog properly to remove this kind of spam.
DeleteThere is a very large Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, carve out of a mountain like Mt. Rushmore. It is not yet finished but attracts many tourists.
ReplyDeletehttps://crazyhorsememorial.org/
If Trump were not senile, he would recognize that it is more powerful to be the only face on a mountain, like Crazy Horse, than to be crammed together into a limited space, like the four American presidents that Trump is itching to join. Crazy Horse was a great warrior and leader of his people. That's why he gets his own mountain. Trump can't even get the algae out of reflecting pond, after spending half the national treasury to do so.