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Shreik Engrish!!!!

I spoke last night to this insulting speech from Obama about how we all need to be bilingual.

 : So does Kaus [1] who says, in part, in a post script:

 Obama’s lecture to parents about how “you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish” [2]? Also condescending! Especially since, as Abe Greenwald points out [3], Obama doesn’t speak Spanish. … He’s insultingly missing the point about the need for a common language, of course. If we want a common language, and the common language of Americans is English, then learning Spanish, however beneficial, is not going to achieve that goal. It’s perfectly reasonable for native English speakers to worry if enough new immigrants whose ethnic leaders demand bilingual education will learn English. They probably will, but Obama’s saying it’s wrong to even worry about it. … [via Corner [4]] … And then there’s the whole embarrassed-by-boorish-Americans-who-don’t-know-French riff [5]. A provien vote-getter!

In response to my complaint that we’ve not seen Obama saying in the past that Immigrants need to learn English, Knapp makes the point in OTB comments [6]that Obama has in fact played the angle of ‘They need to learn English’ in the past. Note the sources he taps, however… none of them from MSM sources. Meaning, Obama said it, but it didn’t get much covered; He never got much liberal traction with it, and therefore never got press. It’s on his websites and still on talkleft which has historically been in the tank for Obama, but that’s all.  Knapps’ snark and the implications of that aside,  apparently, we have yet another case of Obama changing horses. Which in turn raises another point…

Frankly I’m unconvinced Obama himself actually thinks this way, nor do I see this statement of Obama’s of itself the biggest story.  For one thing, he’s changed his official position on things in the last few months so often often there seems no doubt his statements are now finger guage, focus group and poll driven, not driven by any personal belief structure on his part… certainly, the only principle being applied are the ones being fed him by the team trying to regain the WH for the Democrats.  With all the constantly changing of opinion from him we’ve no proof if he even beleives what he says or not.

Notice, please, that in those instances that Knapp points up, he gained nearly no traction with it in the press. Going the other way seems to have attracted him rather more attention from the press and support from his base.He’s trying to say what he thnks his base wants to hear. It’s what his supporters think… the opinions of whose votes he’s pandering for, that I find troubling. He’s just pulling the Clintonesque move of trying to figure out which way the parade is going, so he can be in front, and so appear to be LEADING said parade come voting time.

 

 Memeorandum is tracking this stuff, of course.