Do you sometimes feel as though the presidential campaign of a certain senator is merely a multi-act play performed by an off off off Broadway acting troupe?
I can't shake that feeling sometimes because it seems to me that nearly everything that Barack Obama says requiring simple American historical and/or cultural knowledge is just off of the mark and paradoxically, far wide of it. His comments in New Mexico yesterday are exemplary of this phenomenon.
There's this:
On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today – our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.
Anyone who has cracked open novels/non-fiction containing descriptions of battles knows that, unless otherwise specified, the verb 'to fall' when connected with war means 'to get killed' and the word 'fallen' is the verb's associated participle and can be used as an adjective. /grammar geek
Therefore, the senator did not see any fallen heroes in his audience (hopefully). He probably does not know what the word 'fallen' means in that context and didn't think to rhetorically separate the 'fallen heroes' from the living military personnel in his audience--as I did when I mentioned my personal hero yesterday. He was merely repeating lines written by someone equally as ignorant.
A much more serious gaffe is this one:
Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic.
(All emphasis mine.)
As many have noted, Auschwitz was not liberated by the Americans, but by the Russians--and if you know that Auschwitz is in Poland, you know your geography and you know from which direction the Soviets entered Germany and from which direction the other allied troops entered the country, this makes sense. Armed with such knowledge, it's a difficult error to make.
The question is this: does Obama possess factual knowledge about anything involving American history?* It seems that nearly everything he says about it produces a gaffe.
It's almost as if Obama is playing a role. Badly.
(Thanks to Ace of Spades)
UPDATE: Lord Nazh notices that Obama also claims that his grandfather enlisted right after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan. However, the Kansas WWII Veterans Record shows that his grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham, enlisted in the military on June 18, 1942. Is the delay explainable or was this another badly learned line?
UPDATE: It was Ohrdruf at Buchenwald and it was his grandmother's brother, Charles Payne..
*Some folks talking about the subject are just as bad as he is, noting that his mother was an only child and that his father was Kenyan, therefore "what uncle is he talking about?" Hmmm. (Hint: scroll down and look for two men with the surname 'Dunham.')
As we know, my biological father is also Kenyan; additionally, my mother has no brothers. However, I had not one but two uncles who served in the American forces during WWII--not to mention a grandfather.
I wonder how that could have happened.
But these observers aren't running for president.
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