The scary subtext behind Obama’s banal ass kicking moment

I am not a person given to vulgarity.  I swear under two circumstances:  when something genuinely and completely frightens me or when . . . well, there is no other circumstance.  Frankly, I consider myself smart enough, and my vocabulary rich enough, to eschew swear words entirely.  I have better things to say.

Not so our trash taking president.  I’ve commented since 2007 about his crude language.  It’s not that he’s dropping f-bombs left and right.  It’s just that, off teleprompter, he has a small vocabulary and a very limited emotional range.  He tries modified ghetto talk but, given that he’s such a delicate Ivy League flower, he comes off sounding more silly than tough.  Oh, but he does sound cheap.  Cheap and silly.

So when Obama, in a voice lodged somewhere between peeved and passionless, assured America that he was scoping the Gulf scene for someone’s “ass to kick,” I thought to myself that it was simply more of the same:  an effete, ill-educated, emotionally limited man trying to appear tough for a credulous TV audience in Manhattan.  After having read Erick Erickson, however, I think that I underestimated the true import of Obama’s statement.  There’s a lot more in those two sentences than a little man trying to talk tough.  Instead, there’s an entire essay there about inefficiency, lack of leadership, and blind panic.  Go, read Erickson.  You’ll see what I mean.