"R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me..."

OK, so you can't respect the man; can you at least show some respect for the office?

I'm going to take a round-about way of getting where I'm going, but don't worry, I'll get there.

As I've said before, I live in a blue state but a red county. Very red as it happens, so most of my friends and acquaintances are Conservatives. No big deal; I can respect other people even when I disagree with them. I would like to think that they can do the same, and by and large they can, but once in a while I get something that makes me wonder.

Today I saw a picture that a friend "shared" on his Facebook "wall" of a Presidential motorcade in Hawaii (Obama, of course) with a car going by, the driver allegedly flipping the President the bird.

Here's the pic in question:



Small, isn't it? So small that I can't tell with any certainty what that driver is actually doing with his hand. He may indeed be flipping off the President, or he may be waving. There's no way to tell. I zoomed in as closely as I could, but the resolution of the image is too low to get more detail.

I looked for the source. First I tried a google search for the caption ("Flipping off the president with his motorcade leaving for the airport in Hawaii") and I found a large number of Conservative blogs and Facebook pages that had reposted it, usually with the additional comment "GIVE THAT MAN A MEDAL!" (Yes, all in caps.) But I couldn't identify the source.

I found the same thing, and same captions, posted at a "Bikers against Obama" page at BikerOrNot.com ("The Social Network for Bikers!") but, again, no source was given.

I was able to identify one legitimate news story that used the picture, without the anti-Obama captions or the pointy-thing indicating the alleged middle finger, in The Daily Mail (UK) online. There was no mention in the story or the photo captions of anyone flipping off the President. You'd think that if it had happened, and that the paper ran a story using the picture, there'd be some mention. But not a word. (And, as it happens, the article in The Daily Mail wasn't pro-Obama at all. Just the opposite, in fact.)

Here's the pic, as it ran in The Daily Mail story:



No improvement in resolution; I still can't say what that guy is doing with his hand.

I did note that the photo is credited to the European Pressphoto Agency but could find nothing middle-finger-related on their site, either.

(The only news story I could find for "giving Obama the finger" was a piece in The Bakersfield Californian from early October, and even then no one was actually given the finger.)

OK, enough about the damn photo. It isn't what I wanted to talk about anyway.

I want to talk about respect. Respect that whoever first created this nonsense out of something that doesn't appear to have actually happened (if you have any actual information that it did, please post it in a reply) did not show to the President. Respect that everyone who "shared" that picture (and I include my conservative friend in this) did not show to the President. Respect that the President is due, no matter what you think of him, simply because he's the President.

And he is the President.

I remember when we had eight years of Regan and four years of Bush Sr. (and my sincerest get-well-soon wishes to him) when anyone who made such comments about the Republican President was damn near ostracized. I remember after 9-11 when criticism of Bush II was met with far sterner measures. And I don't remember any of these Republicans receiving the same amount of open hostility and disrespect as Jimmy Carter received. Nowhere near as much as as Bill clinton received. And as for Barack Obama...well, the lid has been blown off.

Just yesterday I saw a news story about some guy who had put an Obama-statue in his front yard. His smiling Obama was depicted as eating a watermelon. He was interviewed; he saw nothing wrong with the statue, saw nothing racist in it, and had no plans to take it down any tome soon.

Do a Google search on "hate obama" and you'll be amazed, and I hope disgusted, by what you find. I came across the "I hate Obama" web site, which is about as disrespectful as you'd imagine to be, and then some (although, to be fair, this site is nearly as anti-Demodcrat is it is anti-Obama).

The web is covered in Obama hate sites. Page titles like "I hate Obama" and "Why I Hate Obama" and "Why I still Hate Obama" are among the more printable ones, even if they lack in imagination. There are sites selling anti-Obama T-shirts and posters and coffee mugs and what-have-you. There are sites that are dedicated to anti-Obama jokes.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of blogs and forums and pages that mostly repeat whatever anyone comes up with that's both anti-Obama and remotely clever (most of which they repeat verbatim, without doing even the most basic fact-checking).

One hate-Obama site stands out from all the others: "Nigger Barack Hussein Obama - Niggermania Forum," which proudly declares itself to be the home for "Nigger Jokes and Racist Humor." This is a collection of "humor" so vile that even I won't repeat any of it.

(Yes, I know it's not "PC" to use the N-word, but I don't think Obama's more vehement detractors have heard of "PC.")

(Democrats, of course aren't immune to this kind of thing; I'll admit that I've indulged in a bit of it myself. I remember "Jail to the chief!" being a common slogan on the Left during the Nixon administration, for example, and I'm sure I said that a few times. I remember the "Too Stupid to be President" site that flourished under Bush II, and I know I visited it a time or two. Well, it wasn't right then (I wasn't right then), and it's not right now.)

I can't ask you to express your love of Obama if you feel nothing but contempt for the man. But has it occurred to you that when you express this contempt, you don't appear to care much if you are contemptuous of the Presidency of the United States?

Like it or not, Barack Obama is the President. You may not like that fact, just as I never liked the fact that George W. Bush was the President. But Bush was the President, whether I liked it or not, and I had to accept that. Conservatives insisted that I should, and they were right about that. But most of them have changed their opinion lately.

OK, so you can't respect the man; can you at least show some respect for the office?

I think it was the Nixon years that did it, that made us a nation of people who had lost respect not just for our leaders but for the position of leadership as well. I think that Nixon himself earned a loss of respect; nevertheless, every President since has had to pay for Nixon's errors. Under Nixon, contempt for the office itself came to eclipse contempt for the man, and the office has never recovered. In fact, contempt for the office has grown steadily over the years. We have had Presidents who have earned our respect, lost our respect, gained our respect, never had our respect, but does anyone think of respecting the office anymore?

I remember an editorial by Andy Rooney, back during the Nixon presidency. Andy was at someone's home when he noticed a framed picture of Nixon on the wall. (This was back during Watergate, when the nation was divided into pro-Nixon and anti-Nixon camps.) Andy indicated the picture and said, "I noticed your picture of President Nixon. I see you support him."

"No," the man replied, "that's a picture of the President of the United States. I support him."

But people don't seem to think that way anymore.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

(I cited a number of sites on the web that were anti-Obama. Nastily anti-Obama. Offensively anti-Obama. You won't find links to them here; do your own research if you must but I'm not going to help you any more than I have.)

Not at all a pro-Obama link, but it illustrates the fact that the "finger" story is bogus: All the president's men: Obama given a 20-MAN motorcade... (The Daily Mail, UK)

The only reference I could find for giving Obama a one-finger salute: Some protest but most at Meadows welcome Obama (The Bakersfield Californian, 10-08-12)

For an interesting view from abroad: Why do they hate Obama? (The Times of India)