Charles Krauthammer said that the President was disconcerted during the first half of his speech - which was supposed to be a memorial for the victims - and there were people in the crowd cheering him like it was a pep rally.
And apparently the President of the University, where the memorial was being held, was laughing and having a good ol' time.
RUSH: I honestly thought about opening the program today, go out and find a medicine man to open the program, much as they opened the pep rally last night, and it was a pep rally. I think even Obama was a little bit put off by the behavior of that crowd last night. There are a lot of questions out there. They had two members of the regime quoting the Bible. They didn't have preachers, priests, rabbis. They had Big Sis and Eric Holder quoting from the Bible, and I'm thinking this is not gonna play well with the Democrat base. And, of course, the Muslim brothers might be scratching their heads over that. The medicine man starts out the first ten minutes telling us who he is, and the creator doing his stuff from the north portal, the south portal, the right portal, the left portal. Kathryn and I were looking at each other, we were fully expecting a memorial, and it started out like a pep rally.
In fact, before the thing started -- there were cameras inside the room -- somebody was just laughing and yukking it up with some people, and Kathryn pointed, "How can anybody sit there and be laughing? You got families of the dead and the wounded sitting there. Who is this guy?" It turned out to be the president of the university. He finally went to the podium to get the whole thing kicked off. Anyway, folks, I want you to listen to a couple sound bites here. I was thinking, "Where was Reverend Wright?" I mean he could read from the Bible just as well as Holder and Big Sis. The memorial/pep rally was on Wednesday and you think this coulda been done a little earlier? You think they coulda done this memorial a little earlier than last night? I do, too. Well, obviously primetime, but they coulda done primetime Monday, like I say were up against a football game, the BCS, they coulda done it Tuesday night.
Before I offer any opinion, and by the way, I want to tell you right now, I'm going to reserve my opinion of Obama's speech itself for later on during the program because we have serious news out there, Snerdley, that is being ignored about this country, the unemployment number skyrocketing, food prices are about to skyrocket. We have no change whatsoever happening economically. We had a speech last night where essentially the people of this country were commanded to change the way we are behaving because of events like this. I know he gave lip service to the notion that we didn't have anything to do with this, but he didn't specifically say it. We'll get into it here in due course. I know people question my ability to do this each and every day, but I am host. I always trust my instincts. So here, last night, MSNBC Hardball, Chris Matthews and the senior political editor of the Huffing and Puffington Post, Howard Fineman, have this exchange.
MATTHEWS: Will Fox, for example, or Rush Limbaugh say, you know, he was okay last night. Is that the scorecard he's looking for, that the other side of him politically get to the side where he was nonpartisan?
FINEMAN: That's a very good question, and I think you're right, I think in his mind -- I'm guessing here -- the president is playing as much to the right here. He would like everyone to say from Fox to MSNBC and everybody, you know, all around the spectrum that he served a civic --
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
FINEMAN: -- important civic healing function tonight, and that's it. And that's it.
RUSH: So apparently Matthews and Fineman are of the opinion that I will be the ultimate arbiter of Obama's speech. That if I can say positive things about it, then okay, it will have been of the right tone with the right message. Now, Fox loved it. The Fox All Stars when this was over were slobbering over the speech. It was predictable. And they were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons. It was smart; it was articulate; it was oratorical; it was all the things the educated ruling class wants their members to be and sound like. Later on on Hardball, this is before Obama's speech, Matthews, New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann had this exchange about Obama's speech and me.
MATTHEWS: Who's to decide what has a political overtone? Rush Limbaugh? Will he score the president tomorrow?
FINEMAN: I think that's why it's very difficult. Everyone's gonna score the president tomorrow. But, look, this thing that happened last Saturday, I think many people hoped that this would bring a moment where everyone would pause and reflect, and instead what's happened over the course of the day since then is everything that's bad about our political culture has speeded up, and the first opportunity was to attack one side, and then the other side attacked the attacks, and it's become this -- it's become everything that you hoped it wouldn't.
RUSH: Oh, come on. It was everything we knew it would be. It became everything we knew it would be, and that is attacking talk radio, attacking Sarah Palin. We knew. It was utterly predictable. I tell you, the reason why they waited as long to do this was they were waiting for polling data. The polling data shows the American people do not associate political rhetoric with anything that happened in this incident. That's what they were waiting on. If the polling data had been different the speech would have been different, but because the polling data says the American people don't associate political give and take, the political rhetoric in the media with what happened here, that pretty much dictated how the speech had to go. So they had to wait for the polling data to come in. That's why they waited -- I have no doubt -- plus, plus, my friends, they needed time to print those T-shirts to give away at the rally.
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