It is with a sad but grateful heart that I bid farewell to President of the United States Barak Obama. He made no snap decisions but carefully studied the issues. The press called it “dithering.” “He was just too thoughtful,” said David Broder, then dean of the press corps. I appreciated his penchant for deliberation and prudence before taking a course of action. The Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of this world  insisted he was angry and not proud of his country and that he exhibited a deep-seated hatred for white people. I think not!

The press did him few favors. Did he just think too much? I think there was a stigmatization of intellect. (Especially Barak’s) Could this faulty coverage of the press have led the way toward the presidency of one who thinks little and screams at those who dare to disagree with him?

He won’t even believe his intelligence reports.

In The Nation, Eric Alterman stated, “Obama proved himself the most consequential liberal president since Franklin Roosevelt. It’s not only passing healthcare reform, saving the economy and and the auto

Industry, but leaving the country with an  unemployment rate of 4.6 percent and a 3.9 percent wage growth rate.” All this with the most obstructionist Congresses in recent history.

Eric Alterman also blames the press, “By relentlessly promoting a false equivalence between truth and (expletive deleted), thoughtfulness and stupidity the press sowed the seeds of the unimaginable disaster that our country and the world are about to reap in the form of Donald Trump’s presidency.”

 

Edna Foster

LaGrange