Follow the money – was the advice given by Deep Throat, the secret informant who helped two intrepid Washington Post journalists unravel the Watergate scandal, forcing Richard Nixon to resign as US president.
As the tax raid on the offices of the Indian Premier League (IPL) in Mumbai showed, a similar trail might be followed to [...]
How come the Wall Street robber barons who brought on the financial crisis are still calling the shots and pillaging the economy?Congress is bought and paid for, and the fox is guarding the chicken coop in the Executive Branch, with Summers and Geithne…
Put up Your Hand if You Ever Lie.
If your hand went up, then we now know you’re a liar. If it didn’t go up then we know you’re an even bigger liar.
When asked the question “are you a liar?†nearly 97% of people answer “noâ€. When the remaining 3% (self-confessed liars) are subjected to questions calibrating their real, rather than perceived, honesty, they turn out to be, on average, 28 times more honest than the people who claimed they never lie. One of the most prolific liars in history was US president Richard Nixon, who researchers found to have lied on record 837 times on a single day.
Geeze, that’s a lot of fibbing.
As you know, I’m a student of human behaviour: what we do, when we do it, how we do it, and why we do it. In the field of behavioural psychology there aren’t too many things that interest me more than the subject of dishonesty. Or is it honesty? Anyway, I’m referring to the propensity we humans have to lie. All humans. In my job I listen to (and look at) a lot of people. Since 1987 I have personally completed over 40,000 one-on-one, face-to-face sessions. Close proximity. I get to see the pupils dilate and constrict. The nervous rash appearing on the neck. The facial ticks arise. The postural change. The awkward fidgeting. I notice the change in the pitch of the voice. And the increase in respiration. The lack of eye contact. The shift in emotional state. The defensive body language. The contradictions in their story. The anger. The denial. And often, the tears. Hence, my very absorbent clothing.
How can we listen to someone who isn’t speaking? Easy. Use our other senses; they will tell us what our ears can’t. We know that communication is about seven percent verbal so it’s only logical to conclude that we will learn more about people (what they think, feel, believe, expect, fear, know, have done) by watching them, than we would by listening to them. Not to say we shouldn’t listen, of course. I’m always more fascinated with what people don’t say because by saying nothing (about a certain matter) they are saying something. People are “speaking†all the time; we just need to learn their language. Pet owners will understand this concept. Once we understand that the verbal stuff is only a minor part of communication and human interaction, our relationships and reality change and our awareness shifts dramatically. If you can’t be bothered researching (and who can?) just watch an episode or three of Lie To Me. Even though it’s ‘only’ a TV show, there’s some pretty cool science and research behind it all. In other words; the truth about liars.
The average person lies 114 times every day of their life. So if you live to be eighty, you’re gonna tell somewhere around 3.3 million fibs over the course of your lifetime. Wowzer!! Can you believe that?
Don’t. I made it up. See how easy that was?
Of course, it’s virtually impossible to acquire accurate and broadly representative statistics regarding how many times the average person lies each day – being as we’re so predisposed to… well, lying. And anyway, who’s gonna keep count? Nobody wants to be seen as a pathological liar – or any kind of liar – so even when it comes to research, we’ll continue to lie about our lying. After all, who’s gonna be honest about their dishonesty? And there-in lies (pun intended) the challenge; in order to gain reliable data we need to rely on people’s honesty. There’s some irony for you. Take a peek at the following report from the University of Massachusetts:
AMHERST, Mass. – Most people lie in everyday conversation when they are trying to appear likable and competent, according to a study conducted by University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert S. Feldman and published in the most recent Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology. The study, published in the journal’s June issue, found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation and told an average of two to three lies. “People tell a considerable number of lies in everyday conversation. It was a very surprising result. We didn’t expect lying to be such a common part of daily life,†Feldman said. The study also found that lies told by men and women differ in content, though not in quantity. Feldman said the results showed that men do not lie more than women or vice versa, but that men and women lie in different ways. “Women were more likely to lie to make the person they were talking to feel good, while men lied most often to make themselves look better,†Feldman said.
What? Men lie to impress people! I find that hard to believe. BTW, have I told you how much I’m bench pressing lately?
Some Common Fibs
Lie: Yep, I’m on my way now.
Truth: I’ll leave in ten minutes. Or twenty.
Lie: No, your arse is tiny.
Truth: You look like a f**king yak from back here.
Lie: If you don’t go to sleep, Santa won’t come next week.
Truth: He’ll come (won’t he?).
Lie: The dog ate my homework.
Truth: There ain’t no homework. Or dog.
Lie: Yep, this assignment is all my work.
Truth: I am the cut and paste king.
Lie: I was working late.
Truth: I’m a Dirtbag.
Lie: No, I’m busy tonight.
Truth: I don’t like you.
Lie: I’ll get back to you.
Truth: I’ll never contact you.
Lie: Yep, I’ve nearly finished.
Truth: I haven’t started.
Lie: I’m really careful with my food.
Truth: Careful not to let others see how much I eat.
Lie: No, I’ll be fine (sob).
Truth: Can I have some attention and sympathy?
Lying Etiquette
So now we’ve established that you’re part of the Pants-on-Fire Fraternity…
1. What are your lying rules?
2. When is it okay to lie? (an example?)
3. Is it okay to lie if we have noble intentions?
4. Should we ever lie to our kids? (an example?)
5. They say “the truth will set you free†but perhaps sometimes a strategic lie will save someone a lot of pain – what do you think?
6. What about you more spiritual and/or religious (not always the same thing) folk, what are your thoughts?
7. Is deception (not sharing certain information perhaps) the same as a lie?
8. Have someone else’s lies impacted your reality in a big way?
9. Are you aware of your lying?
10. Surely, it’s okay to lie to your girlfriend about her upcoming ’surprise’ birthday party?
I don’t expect you to answer all of the above questions (or any for that matter) but I thought they might be good conversation-starters. Off you go Pinocchio.
And in answer to your question…
Q. Do you ever lie Craig?
A. Only when I’m awake.
Other than that, never.
Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host, motivational speaker and university lecturer. For the past 25 years he has been a leading presenter, educator, motivator and commentator in the areas of personal and professional development. You can visit Craig’s blog at Motivational Speaker.FREE eBook – So… You’ve Decided to Get in Shape (Again) Craig’s FREE eBook takes 20 – 30 minutes to read, and addresses the REAL getting-in-shape issues based on his 25 years of experience. To get Craig’s FREE eBook click here, weight loss books.
Edward Kennedy, a liberal champion, has died. Who could fill the gap he has left?
BRAIN cancer, diagnosed last May, killed Edward Kennedy on Tuesday August 25th. America’s liberal lion, famous in later years for his girth, his flushed face and his mane of white hair, had been ill and largely out of Senate action for months. But when he did appear, he was unafraid of linking what he called the biggest political issue of his life to his own circumstances. “Over the last year, I’ve seen our health-care system up close. I’ve benefited from the best of medicine, but I’ve also witnessed the frustration and outrage of patients and doctors alike as they face the challenges of a system that shortchanges millions of Americans,” he wrote in the Boston Globe. He was as keen as ever to join the fight for reform, but had to leave it to the man he so helpfully endorsed when he was just a hopeful senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.
Mr Kennedy’s status stemmed mostly from being part of the Kennedy clan: the apparently charmed brothers, Robert, Edward and John. His brand of liberal politics was much closer to Robert’s keen idealism (cruelly curtailed in 1968 as he campaigned for the Democratic nomination) than to JFK’s more pragmatic style. Edward was sworn in as a senator in 1962 and, by comparison with his brothers, seemed colourless. But after Bobby’s assassination, now the lone Kennedy remaining, his standing was such that the polls suggested the Democratic Party would win the election against Richard Nixon if he was included on the ticket. That was before an accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969, the death of the passenger in his car, Mary Jo Kopechne, and his own failure to explain what had happened, drew attention to his inability to cope in a crisis. …
By Nick Bryant
BBC News
To the already long list of improbable White House get-togethers – Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Princess Diana and John Travolta – we will be able to add the names of a black professor and a white policeman at the centre of a national uproar over race relations.
Cambridge police sergeant Jim Crowley and Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard scholar he arrested after responding to a report of a possible break-in at Mr Gates’s home, will sit down with Mr Obama on Thursday for a conciliatory beer.
Admittedly, it is tempting to view the invitation as the ultimate conflation of the age of Obama and the age of Oprah.
Aside from the choice of beverage, there is something very daytime television, something very soft focus, something very soft sofa, about this attempt to defuse the controversy.
Mr Gates was held for disorderly conduct, after he allegedly criticised police behaviour during the incident at the scholar’s home on 16 July. President Obama – a friend of Mr Gates – got involved in the case, saying that the police had acted "stupidily".
Yet startling and novel as Mr Obama’s attempts to diffuse the controversy are, he is merely upholding a long tradition. Presidential racial politics has often been conducted with gestures, symbols and photo opportunities, and this is but the latest example of a well-worn genre.
Obvious gestures
Even since the war, when black voters – or the Negro vote, as it was then known – became a potentially election-deciding force, presidents have embraced symbolic gestures, for the simple reason that they allow them to appeal to blacks without alienating whites.
Often the gestures have been rather obvious. Sometimes they have been so subtle as to be almost subliminal.
Alert to the growing strategic importance of the black vote in key northern battleground states, Dwight D Eisenhower invited the black contralto, Marian Anderson, to perform at his 1956 inauguration. It was a gesture especially redolent with meaning, since in 1939 she had been barred from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington.
His successor, John F Kennedy, happily extended a White House invitation to the world heavyweight boxing champion, Floyd Patterson, hoping it would compensate for his stubborn refusal to offer similar hospitality to Martin Luther King.
"Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race"
Black scholar arrest angers ObamaNot to be outdone by President Eisenhower, JFK also invited Marian Anderson to sing at his inaugural, but then went a few notable steps further by dancing with black women at the balls later on that night.
This kind of imagery has also been used in reverse, using more harmful symbolism.
Ronald Reagan delivered the first major speech of his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi – the town memorialised in the Hollywood movie, Mississippi Burning – where three civil-rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.
The subject of his speech was "states rights", for some a euphemism for white supremacy.
In 1992, the then-Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, famously attacked the black singer Sister Souljah; and, more infamously, made sure he returned home to Little Rock mid-campaign to oversee the lethal injection of Ricky Ray Rector, a brain damaged black man who had killed a police officer.
Fears and grievances
These kind of techniques are so commonly deployed, largely because they can have such a dramatic effect.
Even as black leaders attacked him for his timidity on civil rights, Mr Kennedy enjoyed high approval ratings among black voters, partly because they had been such full participants in his inaugural celebrations.
Nothing underscored Bill Clinton’s moderate, New Democrat credentials than his attack on a black hip-hop artist.
So history suggests that it would be foolish to underestimate the reconciliatory potential of this Budweiser moment, however dubious it sounds.
After all, conflict resolution often turns on the mutual and public acknowledgement of each side’s fears and grievances, along with the photo-opportunity that accompanies it.
By extending this invitation, Mr Obama also appears to be signalling that neither Prof Gates nor Sgt Crowley were wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong.
The beer at the White House, then, marks an attempt to balance white fears about black lawlessness, whether real or imagined, with black middle-class grievances about white racism, whether real or imagined.
Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race. To be a history-defying candidate he became a history-denying figure, and left others to attach racial meaning to his candidacy.
Since winning the presidency, however, he has been much more expansive on the issue, starting with his victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago, where he located his achievement in the context of Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, the climatic moments of the civil rights era.
During his recent speech before the civil-rights group, the NAACP, he made reference to these events to emphasise his theme of black self-improvement.
"I know that nine little children did not walk through a schoolhouse door in Little Rock so that we could stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere," he said accusingly.
Biblical language
The Gates controversy has been harder for him to deal with because it deals with more awkward history and touches on the ambiguous legacy of the civil rights era.
White support for the civil rights movement started to wane when blacks demanded affirmative action and reparations. Conversely, racial profiling is an area where blacks feel they are still treated as second-class citizens.
This controversy not only taps into that milieu, but inadvertently brings together two unlikely protagonists: Prof Gates, one of America’s most eloquent advocates of affirmative action, and Sgt Crowley, who for five years taught a class on racial profiling at a local police academy which cautioned against stereotyping.
When you reach back into American history, you often find that racial progress has often come when the case for reform or reconciliation has been framed in Biblical language or used faith-based allegories.
Rev King’s I Have a Dream speech is the most obvious and glorious example.
Now Barack Obama is conjuring up a modern-day parable: the story of the professor, the policeman and the president. But can he turn beer into progress
Nick Bryant is the author of The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By Nick Bryant
BBC News
To the already long list of improbable White House get-togethers – Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Princess Diana and John Travolta – we will be able to add the names of a black professor and a white policeman at the centre of a national uproar over race relations.
Cambridge police sergeant Jim Crowley and Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard scholar he arrested after responding to a report of a possible break-in at Mr Gates’s home, will sit down with Mr Obama on Thursday for a conciliatory beer.
Admittedly, it is tempting to view the invitation as the ultimate conflation of the age of Obama and the age of Oprah.
Aside from the choice of beverage, there is something very daytime television, something very soft focus, something very soft sofa, about this attempt to defuse the controversy.
Mr Gates was held for disorderly conduct, after he allegedly criticised police behaviour during the incident at the scholar’s home on 16 July. President Obama – a friend of Mr Gates – got involved in the case, saying that the police had acted "stupidily".
Yet startling and novel as Mr Obama’s attempts to diffuse the controversy are, he is merely upholding a long tradition. Presidential racial politics has often been conducted with gestures, symbols and photo opportunities, and this is but the latest example of a well-worn genre.
Obvious gestures
Even since the war, when black voters – or the Negro vote, as it was then known – became a potentially election-deciding force, presidents have embraced symbolic gestures, for the simple reason that they allow them to appeal to blacks without alienating whites.
Often the gestures have been rather obvious. Sometimes they have been so subtle as to be almost subliminal.
Alert to the growing strategic importance of the black vote in key northern battleground states, Dwight D Eisenhower invited the black contralto, Marian Anderson, to perform at his 1956 inauguration. It was a gesture especially redolent with meaning, since in 1939 she had been barred from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington.
His successor, John F Kennedy, happily extended a White House invitation to the world heavyweight boxing champion, Floyd Patterson, hoping it would compensate for his stubborn refusal to offer similar hospitality to Martin Luther King.
"Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race"
Black scholar arrest angers ObamaNot to be outdone by President Eisenhower, JFK also invited Marian Anderson to sing at his inaugural, but then went a few notable steps further by dancing with black women at the balls later on that night.
This kind of imagery has also been used in reverse, using more harmful symbolism.
Ronald Reagan delivered the first major speech of his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi – the town memorialised in the Hollywood movie, Mississippi Burning – where three civil-rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.
The subject of his speech was "states rights", for some a euphemism for white supremacy.
In 1992, the then-Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, famously attacked the black singer Sister Souljah; and, more infamously, made sure he returned home to Little Rock mid-campaign to oversee the lethal injection of Ricky Ray Rector, a brain damaged black man who had killed a police officer.
Fears and grievances
These kind of techniques are so commonly deployed, largely because they can have such a dramatic effect.
Even as black leaders attacked him for his timidity on civil rights, Mr Kennedy enjoyed high approval ratings among black voters, partly because they had been such full participants in his inaugural celebrations.
Nothing underscored Bill Clinton’s moderate, New Democrat credentials than his attack on a black hip-hop artist.
So history suggests that it would be foolish to underestimate the reconciliatory potential of this Budweiser moment, however dubious it sounds.
After all, conflict resolution often turns on the mutual and public acknowledgement of each side’s fears and grievances, along with the photo-opportunity that accompanies it.
By extending this invitation, Mr Obama also appears to be signalling that neither Prof Gates nor Sgt Crowley were wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong.
The beer at the White House, then, marks an attempt to balance white fears about black lawlessness, whether real or imagined, with black middle-class grievances about white racism, whether real or imagined.
Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race. To be a history-defying candidate he became a history-denying figure, and left others to attach racial meaning to his candidacy.
Since winning the presidency, however, he has been much more expansive on the issue, starting with his victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago, where he located his achievement in the context of Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, the climatic moments of the civil rights era.
During his recent speech before the civil-rights group, the NAACP, he made reference to these events to emphasise his theme of black self-improvement.
"I know that nine little children did not walk through a schoolhouse door in Little Rock so that we could stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere," he said accusingly.
Biblical language
The Gates controversy has been harder for him to deal with because it deals with more awkward history and touches on the ambiguous legacy of the civil rights era.
White support for the civil rights movement started to wane when blacks demanded affirmative action and reparations. Conversely, racial profiling is an area where blacks feel they are still treated as second-class citizens.
This controversy not only taps into that milieu, but inadvertently brings together two unlikely protagonists: Prof Gates, one of America’s most eloquent advocates of affirmative action, and Sgt Crowley, who for five years taught a class on racial profiling at a local police academy which cautioned against stereotyping.
When you reach back into American history, you often find that racial progress has often come when the case for reform or reconciliation has been framed in Biblical language or used faith-based allegories.
Rev King’s I Have a Dream speech is the most obvious and glorious example.
Now Barack Obama is conjuring up a modern-day parable: the story of the professor, the policeman and the president. But can he turn beer into progress
Nick Bryant is the author of The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Sarah Palin quit on Sunday, exiting “stage far right” as Talking Points Memo put it. Point Guard Sarah couldn’t finish the third quarter – she…
If other GOP members who are elected to office follow her example and quit after serving approximately 60% of their first elected terms — just think how much better for the nation.
By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington
It is turning out to be a week of failed sales.
The first one I witnessed on Tuesday in the overcrowded, over-heated conference room of a Washington auction house.
The glitterati of the capital’s real estate world had turned up for a property auction. So had dozens of journalists.
The object of their interest was the Watergate Hotel, where in 1972 four burglars spent the night before breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in another part of the Watergate complex.
Two years later, after journalists followed a trail from the burglary into the heart of the White House, Richard Nixon became the first US President to be forced to resign.
No bids
The auctioneer, a pale faced veteran of his trade, did not delve into the uglier aspects of the hotel’s past. He did not need to – everyone was aware of the details.
But in a country which puts a price on all aspects of fame, even infamy, he had clearly hoped that this landmark would create a forest of raised hands on the auction floor.
But the bidding got stuck where it started, at $25m (£15m).
The Watergate was bought by the very bank that had issued the loan, on which the previous owner had defaulted.
The auctioneer was practically pleading with the audience. Then panic struck and he went to a room to re-emerge with an even more urgent plea. The Watergate was not just a "Washington landmark", it was a "national landmark". He added that he had received calls from London to Dubai.
In the end, none of this interest, notoriety and publicity translated into a solid bid.
The hotel is too run down and Washington has a glut of five star hotels struggling to fill rooms during a recession. This did not exactly persuade potential bidders to put hard cash into a piece of dubious history.
As I stood there, sweltering in the heat of an airless conference room, my mind wandered to another sale taking place in a nearby building that also was not going according to plan.
In this case, the chief auctioneer is called Barack Obama and the lot he is trying to sell is healthcare reform.
All the indications are that this sale is not being sealed as quickly as the administration had hoped.
Obama’s ‘Waterloo’
The summer recess beckons. Washington will soon be as deserted as a city hit by a neutron bomb and with the clock ticking, the proposals are sinking in the quicksand of Capitol Hill.
Republican lawmakers have been mounting the barricades ever since the president declared his intention to make healthcare reform a top priority.
Senator Jim DeMint throatily said the other day that if the plan failed, it would turn out to be Mr Obama’s "Waterloo".
That remark made the senator look spiteful and gave the president an opportunity to hit back at his opponents.
More alarmingly, Democratic ranks also seem to be breaking.
"America is a country where people are forever chasing deals… And yet this country is curiously lax when it comes to the household cost of healthcare"
Some do not like the reform plans because they think America, already up to its neck in debt, cannot afford them.
Even Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, has slammed on the brakes because she does not like the fact that universal coverage – under her House colleagues’ proposals – would be paid for by a tax hike on individuals earning more than $280,000 and families earning more than $350,000
She wants that limit to be much higher, around $500,000 per individual and $1m per family. This sounds like: "Let the rich be fleeced so the poor can heal".
Broadly speaking, most polls indicate that just under two-thirds of the country are in favour of healthcare reform, the same number that still like the president.
Surely these figures have the makings of a deal.
Here is the problem. President Obama does not need to appeal to the 47 million Americans who are uninsured. He is their only hope.
He does not even need to appeal to the 25 million or so who are under-insured and are understandably bitter that they are not getting the service their premiums had led them to expect.
Ironically, this fight is about the largest group of them all, the 83% of Americans (according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll) who are happy with their healthcare.
Too many words
They are the ones reform opponents have been scaring with ads featuring Canada’s mostly state-funded health service.
In one of them, a cancer patient explains how she would have died if she had stayed in Canada and waited for the state to cut out her tumour.
The people these ads are aimed at are the ones who cannot see what is in the reform for them.
But what is in it for them, potentially, is a huge saving.
It is calculated that the annual cost of health insurance is nearly $6,000 per capita; that is nearly twice as much as France or Germany where the majority of citizens are satisfied with their care.
Since the money is deducted from Americans at source, they never really feel the pain of the cost and they rarely see how it breaks down. This has made them lazy.
America is a country where people are forever chasing deals, shaving margins and measuring bangs for bucks. And yet this country is curiously lax when it comes to the household cost of healthcare, its second biggest annual expense after the mortgage.
In other words, Mr Obama needs to appeal to the born again stinginess of American bargain-hunters lumbered with a recession.
He needs to explain this as sparingly and reassuringly as a tax consultant. How about using a white board
It is about the numbers, Mr President. Golden words alone will not do the trick. There have been too many already.
Mr Obama used the power of words to get himself elected. He cannot use the power of words to persuade Middle America that healthcare reform is in their best financial interest.
The president has given four prime-time news conferences in six months.
That is how many George W Bush gave in eight years. Now, to be fair, we criticised Mr Bush for giving too few and it would be churlish to slam Mr Obama for giving too many.
Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, stacked them like no one else. He gave 33 prime-time news conferences in his eight years in office.
The point is not their frequency. It is their potency. They do not seem to be working when it comes to selling policy.
The president is now far more popular than his policies and that is a dangerous place to be as he heads off to splash in the waves off Martha’s Vineyard.
His opponents want this to be his Waterloo.
He has to be careful it does not become his unsold Watergate Hotel.
Matt Frei is the presenter of BBC World News America which airs every weekday on BBC News, BBC World News and BBC America (for viewers outside the UK only).
Send us your comments in reaction to Matt Frei’s Washington diary using the link below:
Send us your commentsThis article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Walter Cronkite was a liberal and no, he didn’t have a problem with that. He was not afraid to express opinions when the situation called for it; he just insisted it be marked an editorial.
From ‘bad ass’ to ‘throwing like a toddler’, the US president’s maiden throw divides America
From his Middle East strategy to healthcare reform, Barack Obama has made several pitches to the American people in recent months. But none has attracted the level of scrutiny as the one he made last night, from the mound at the major league All-Star baseball game at Busch stadium in St Louis, Philadelphia.
Obama, the fifth sitting president to throw the first pitch at an All-Star game – after Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said the pitch was “as much fun as I’ve had in quite some time”.
He attracted a few boos from the otherwise cheering crowd when he emerged from the dugout wearing a Chicago White Sox jacket – a wardrobe choice the president told Fox TV was influenced by his wife’s opinion that it makes him “look cute”. He had previously tossed the first ball to his favourite team during the American League championship series in 2005.
The US media seemed rather underwhelmed by his performance, with the Los Angeles Times describing “his short southpaw lob” as “lacking in style points”, while the New York Times political blogger Jack Curry said the throw floated softly but was a bit “wobbly”.
Opinion was rather more polarised on YouTube, with comments under one clip ranging from the unflattering assessment by fireman10002000 that “he throws like a toddler” to poster diegothomas extolling the president for being “such a bad ass”. Although many more posters were more concerned by the Fox cameraman spectacularly failing to capture the ball being caught.
The man himself seemed pretty relaxed with his performance. But perhaps he was thankful he didn’t put his foot in it as he did in an interview with chat show host Jay Leno, in which he seemed to mock disabled athletes by laughingly comparing his own diabolical bowling score to what he called “the Special Olympics”.
From ‘bad ass’ to ‘throwing like a toddler’, the US president’s maiden throw divides America
From his Middle East strategy to healthcare reform, Barack Obama has made several pitches to the American people in recent months. But none has attracted the level of scrutiny as the one he made last night, from the mound at the major league All-Star baseball game at Busch stadium in St Louis, Philadelphia.
Obama, the fifth sitting president to throw the first pitch at an All-Star game – after Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said the pitch was “as much fun as I’ve had in quite some time”.
He attracted a few boos from the otherwise cheering crowd when he emerged from the dugout wearing a Chicago White Sox jacket – a wardrobe choice the president told Fox TV was influenced by his wife’s opinion that it makes him “look cute”. He had previously tossed the first ball to his favourite team during the American League championship series in 2005.
The US media seemed rather underwhelmed by his performance, with the Los Angeles Times describing “his short southpaw lob” as “lacking in style points”, while the New York Times political blogger Jack Curry said the throw floated softly but was a bit “wobbly”.
Opinion was rather more polarised on YouTube, with comments under one clip ranging from the unflattering assessment by fireman10002000 that “he throws like a toddler” to poster diegothomas extolling the president for being “such a bad ass”. Although many more posters were more concerned by the Fox cameraman spectacularly failing to capture the ball being caught.
The man himself seemed pretty relaxed with his performance. But perhaps he was thankful he didn’t put his foot in it as he did in an interview with chat show host Jay Leno, in which he seemed to mock disabled athletes by laughingly comparing his own diabolical bowling score to what he called “the Special Olympics”.
President Obama has always said he wants to look forward, not backward. This, when it comes to the actions of the previous administration, means Obama…
Smack on the funny bone
Politicians under fire from satirists should never rub their bruises. The smart move is to laugh along
David Cameron has made clear that he will look around the world for new political ideas and must be tempted by an initiative being trialled in Pakistan. If President Zardari’s attempt to ban the dissemination of jokes about him – through a new cyber crimes act, targeting blog comedy, text jests and email facetiousness – were to be introduced in the UK, Channel 4 could be prevented from screening a film, revealed this week, that will recreate the events leading up to a notorious photo of Bullingdon Club members including Cameron and Boris Johnson.
This film continues a recent British tradition of attacking politicians early in their careers. Once, a leader would have had to form at least one administration before meriting a feature-length TV demolition. But Blair and Brown were picked off as aspirants and even Michael Howard, although he never became prime minister, was subjected to a peak-time comedy about a draconian home secretary aiming higher.
Although being spread through new technology, the kind of jokes that Zardari objects to have an older history: one of them – that the great leader has asked for his face to go on a stamp but citizens aren’t sure which side to spit on – was applied, for example, to Richard Nixon. Curiously, the British figure most vulnerable to the gag – Elizabeth II – has avoided it, even among republicans.
That particular line of attack has a limited shelf-life – not because of a rise in political competence but the spread of self-adhesive stamps – but the leader of Pakistan is surely doomed in his attempt to introduce a gagging order on gags and, anyway, he has perhaps over-estimated their power.
Objectively, it is difficult to argue that political satire has had much direct effect on history. Richard Nixon, though seared by comedians throughout his career, was brought down by journalism rather than jokes. And three of the most violently caricatured politicians of modern times – Thatcher, Blair, George Bush – also served the longest terms.
All political satirists must eventually reflect on this strike rate: Ian Hislop has argued persuasively that political humour is not useless simply because it fails to achieve immediate regime-change: he believes that there is a moral imperative at least to have tried. And there is also, clearly, a greatly cheering and cathartic effect for those members of the population who didn’t vote for the leader in question. A recent book anthologising jokes told in eastern Europe during the cold war touchingly showed the way in which humour can be a democratic immune system, keeping the dissident spirit alive.
Also – as the president of Pakistan’s leaden intervention has proved – there is considerable comfort in knowing that the jokes have hit home. The satirists of Nixon could do nothing about his fat mandates but they could be cheered by his visibly thin skin.
One reason that Margaret Thatcher was a more effective premier than John Major was that she showed no sign of knowing the jokes about her – and would deliver speech-written gags that she didn’t understand – whereas he liked to challenge journalists and cartoonists on whether their slights were fair. Like batsmen hit by bouncers, politicians should never rub their bruises.
The most revealing aspect of Zardari’s crackdown is that it targets the newer media. This reflects a feeling among politicians that, for the present generation of leaders, the tactics of character assassination have escalated. In fact, the gags are simply more visible: what was once spoken on street corners now leaves a cyber-trail, which Zardari has foolishly chased. But new technologies will usually defeat censorship.
In this sense, at a very small level, there is a link between Channel 4′s Cameron film and Zardari’s ban. The Conservative leader has imposed his own limits on wit by securing the withdrawal of the Bullingdon picture from public use. Opponents have got round this by recreating the photo in various ways – the TV comedy is another example.
What’s really funny about what happened in Pakistan, though, is that politicians in other countries are going to have to be tremendously good-humoured about any attacks on them because of the risk that they will be compared to Zardari.
By taking offence at jests, President Zardari has made himself a laughing stock. A man who tried to weaken political humour has demonstrated its strength. As the touchy John Major said, in a different context, if it’s hurting, it’s working. Skilled politicians know that the smart move is to join in the jokes, no matter how much they sting. Team Cameron, if it is sensible, will already be working on some wry, self-deprecating quip for their reluctant film star on the night of the Bullingdon transmission.