Every President has been subjected to ridicule and criticism by comedians and ideologically biased commentators, but the level of insults and rudeness against President Obama has been nonstop!
This past week, a California Republican official in Orange County sent out an email depicting the President as a chimpanzee! This is not the first time this has happened, and it is very clear that the purpose of the email was racist!
The official apologized if what she did offended anyone, which is not quite the same thing as being really aware of how wrong and inappropriate such an email represented!
At the same time, not only Bill O’Reilly has shown disrespect against President Obama in an interview!
It has become an endemic problem for many reporters, even local reporters, who insist on interrupting the President before he can finish an answer to their questions. The fact that Obama was described as testy yesterday to a reporter, by simply asking that in the future he be allowed to finish his answers without interruption, has suddenly become a news item. The fact that Obama smiled through earlier such interruptions by O’Reilly and others is not as much noticed! As if the President is not entitled to be annoyed at the rudeness and disrespect displayed!
Imagine any earlier President being interrupted in the same manner! The fact that Dan Rather dared to tell President Richard Nixon that he had not answered the question AFTER Nixon had responded, was made a big controversy 40 years ago, and Rather was not being rude or disruptive at all.
This lack of respect and decency is part and parcel of the deterioration of American society, as witnessed by the lack of professionalism and incompetence so often witnessed today in all fields of work, as the author commented on yesterday in another blog entry!