Leave it to Mark Steyn to phrase it just right:
I believe it was Jean Giraudoux who first said, "Only the mediocre are always at their best." Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre. His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race. Yet the Obammyboppers who once squealed with delight are weary of last year's boy band. At the end of the big Oval Office address, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSNBC gang jeered the president. For a bewildered President Obama, it must have felt like his Ceausescu balcony moment. Had they caught up with him in the White House parking lot, they would have put him up against the wall and clubbed him to a pulp with Mr. Matthews' no-longer-tingling leg.
For the first time, I felt a wee bit sorry for the poor fellow. What had he done to so enrage his full supporting chorus? In The Washington Post, the reaction of longtime Obammysoxer Eugene Robinson was headlined "Obama disappoints from the beginning of his speech."
So what? He always "disappoints." What would have been startling would have been if he hadn't "disappointed." His eve-of-election rally for Martha Coakley "disappointed" the Massachusetts electorate so much it gave Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican. His speech for Chicago's Olympic bid "disappointed" the Oslo committee so much it gave the games to Pyongyang, or Ougadougou, or any city offering to build a stadium with electrical outlets incompatible with Mr. Obama's teleprompter. Be honest, guys, his inaugural address "disappointed," too, didn't it? Oh, in those days, you still did your best to make the case for it. "He carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate," wrote Stanley Fish in the New York Times. "There is a technical term for this kind of writing - parataxis, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as 'the placing of propositions or clauses one after the other without indicating ... the relation of co-ordination or subordination between them.'"
Gotcha. To a fool, His Majesty's new clothes appear invisible. But, to a wise man, the placing of buttons and pockets without indicating the relation of co-ordination is a fascinating exercise in parataxical couture.
Read the rest here....strong stuff.
(hat tip, Soccer Dad
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