Saturday, February 12, 2011

TIME Magazine Fails Again


It seems that TIME magazine does everything it can to capitalize on trending popularity, truth be damned. And thanks to a rising tide of conservatism in this country and the fact that the magazine is pot-committed to the Obama administration, they’ve stooped to a new low with their latest cover, “Why Obama [Heart] Reagan,” which shows smiling images of each president enjoying a friendly embrace.

Obviously, this is meant to capture the attention of young liberals that love Barack Obama, and validate their suspicions that he desperately seeks bi-partisanship with Republicans. Perhaps TIME expects that young liberals will buy just about anything if it’s said in the right tenor and from the right pulpit, and given the fact that a relatively unknown community organizer and junior senator became president on the wave of popularity among this group, I can’t say I blame them. But as far as older liberals and all conservatives, it’s amazing that TIME could have thought they could get this one by the goalie. It is nothing less than an insult to our intelligence, so inarguably untrue that it could only be the result of deliberate fabrication or the innocent result of the TIME editors' stupidity.

Any sane person could go on for hours about the differences between the two. Obama is a proponent of expansive and powerful government, while Reagan viewed such a government as the most dangerous threat to American liberty, and particularly when it comes to the healthcare industry that Obama just consigned to federal administration. Reagan believed America had a responsibility to foster the notion of individual freedoms and limited government by globally exercising "leadership through strength," whereas Barack Obama believes that he should bow to foreign diplomats and apologize for America’s arrogance by quietly homogenizing our position with the rest of the globe.

The two could not be any more different, and even if Obama did "learn" something from Reagan as this cover implies, there is not one shred of evidence that he implemented any of it. If TIME really wanted to correlate Obama with a figure of the late twentieth century, and if the magazine had an ounce of integrity, that cover would have read, “Why Obama [Heart] Carter.” It would be far more believable, and Americans would not have to look past the crisis in Egypt to see the parallel. Both have vocally demonized American-friendly regimes as “enemies of the people,” and both have effectively opened the door to allow fundamental Islamic theocracies to take power in opposition to Western freedoms and Israel.

William Sullivan

3 comments:

  1. you are so right.I would definately compare Obama to Carter.I only hope he follows Carter in being a one time president.

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  2. Re: the over-the-top continuous commemortation of the American Civil War

    Apropos the commemoration of the American Civil War:

    I wonder if the fascination of the Civil War and all wars, murders and bloody scenes is like the rubbernecking so many people do attracted to these events?

    I don't want to diss those who have lost loved ones but deplore the glorification of wars and the ghoulish attention paid to bloody events.

    The takeaway from the Civil War should be what Lincoln spoke to in his Gettysburgh Address that our Nation remained unified and that that our nation of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

    The other important takeaway is that the instution of slavery in the US was abolished.

    I pray that all wars will someday be a reality only in history books, fervently to be hoped.

    President Obama has been speaking about getting opposing sides to meet to discuss and come to agreed and binding resolutions rather than resorting to armed conflicts. This is a hopeful sign in the right direction and hope this idea grows.

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  3. @ Frank,

    I wholeheartedly disagree. Not only is Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan inconsistent with your claim that he opposes "armed conflicts," but he has been anything but a bipartisan element in Washington. He, outside of possibly Nancy Pelosi, is the most divisive figure there.

    And what you have taken away from the Civil War are not the lessons we should have learned. We all abhor the practice of slavery, and we can all be grateful that it was ended, though I certainly think the cost could have been less severe. But the war was not solely about liberating black slaves and making them equals. Lincoln proves that in another speech, this time in a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858: "I am not, nor have ever been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office." And as far as the Gettysberg Address that everyone remembers so fondly? Here's what H.L. Mencken had to say of the matter.

    "It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think about the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of the everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysberg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination- that a government by the people, for the people, should not perish from the Earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates that fought for the right of the people to govern themselves."

    William

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