Kuhner: Obama's Memorial Address Was “A Surreal Spectacle In Narcissistic Self-Congratulation”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

In a January 13 Washington Times column titled, “Obama's Tucson degradation,” Jeffrey Kuhner wrote that President Obama is “cynically exploiting the tragic shooting in Tucson for political gain” and that his memorial address “was a surreal spectacle in narcissistic self-congratulation” that “dishonored the victims” of the shootings.

Kuhner further wrote that the Tucson victims were “degraded by a narcissistic president who used their suffering as political fodder.”

From Kuhner's column:

President Obama is cynically exploiting the tragic shooting in Tucson for political gain. His memorial address Wednesday night was a surreal spectacle in narcissistic self-congratulation. It dishonored the victims, those who were murdered and maimed by Jared Lee Loughner, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona Democrat.

Instead of being a solemn and serious event, the memorial resembled a pro-Obama pep rally. The president of Arizona University praised Mr. Obama for his “visionary” and “courageous” leadership. Throughout the memorial and Mr. Obama's speech, students regularly cheered, clapped, whistled and hollered. All the while, the president basked in his newfound glory. The address rekindled some of the magic - the euphoria, the soaring rhetoric - of the 2008 campaign. Mr. Obama lectured Americans about the need for “civility” in our national discourse. He even invoked the memory of a slain 9-year-old girl, Christina Green, urging America to use the tragedy to create a more decent, united and harmonious republic and thereby “live up to her expectations.”

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Indeed, Mr. Loughner pulled the trigger and is solely responsible for the atrocity. But the radical legacy of the 1960s enabled him. In tandem, Mr. Obama epitomizes the self-centeredness unleashed by the permissive era by turning a memorial rooted in grief into a celebration of himself. The Tucson victims were thus brutalized by a deranged young man who should have been institutionalized and then doubly degraded by a narcissistic president who used their suffering as political fodder.