Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The "You Worship Obama" Meme Explained

Recently, one of the more persistently idiotic right wing commenters on the Pilot Website exploded with one of those angry, bitter diatribes that exemplifies one of the more baffling cliches from the land of Wingnuttia:

There is nothing [Obama]  could do that would have them to speak ill of him. They would sooner have their tongues cut out. Liberalism is their religion and Obama is their deity.

This "leftists worship Obama  and never, ever criticize him" bullshit comes from people who have clearly never met any actual leftists. Read Glenn Greenwald, Firedoglake, a goodly portion of the posts on DailyKos, Americablog...there's been plenty of criticism of Barack Obama for not being liberal enough, not pushing for a public option in the health care law, for not being tough enough on bankers and Wall Street, for drone strikes and kill lists, etc. etc.

 But it's an article of faith on the right that Obama never gets any flak from the left, and by "article of faith" I mean "something that they believe despite a complete lack of real world evidence."

I never have been able to figure out why they cling to this particular lie so bitterly. After all, you'd think they'd be searching for liberals angry with Obama. I remember there used to be a right wing meme called "even the liberal," as in "even the liberal New York Times thinks Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." But now that a center oh-so-slightly left President is in the White House, they blithely ignore all the criticism he gets from disappointed actual  leftists in favor of this fantasy that "all you liberals blindly worship him."

I think I've finally figured it out. As far back as the 2012 primaries, the far right backed one kindred spirit after another: Cain, Bachmann, Santorum, et. al. and they all imploded.

Finally, they got Mitt Romney. No one really liked the guy, on the left or the right. But for some reason, they thought he was "electable", and that's all that mattered. To them, anyone would be better than the Muslim Marxist Kenyan Usurper.

And that's why they get so furious at the idea that anyone actually likes Barack Obama. They're bitter and jealous that some of us got to vote for a candidate we actually like.

4 comments:

Karen in Ohio said...

Eat your hearts out, righties.

Randy Johnson said...

They never seem to get, or just ignore it as you say, that everything Obama pushes is not liked by everyone.

Alexandra Sokoloff said...

We like him, we respect him, we trust him. All infuriating, I'm sure, but maybe the Republicans should try it.

DiscoDollyDeb said...

It's always projection on the part of Republicans. When they say liberals worship Obama, it's really a projection of their hero worship for men of the GOP. I'm not in favor of any unquestioned, uncritical admiration for any political figure, but especially when the GOP keeps choosing such unworthy objects: Dubya, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, the list goes on....