President Obama cried, and his haters never miss a beat
An emotional President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks about the youngest victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, while speaking about steps his administration is taking to reduce gun violence. Credit: AP / Jacquelyn Martin
Obama cried.
And we reacted.
For many of us, it was a powerful moment when President Barack Obama shed tears while talking about the 20 first-graders gunned down three years ago in Newtown, Connecticut. Announcing some modest gun control actions, his emotions in invoking those children as well as people killed every day on the streets of his hometown of Chicago were raw and palpable.
Or so we thought.
Even more extraordinary was the swift judgment that Obama had cried crocodile tears. That they were fake. Manufactured for the sake of manipulation. The accusations came from conservative writers and commentators, from Twittersphere dwellers and gun rights activists.
Obama used an onion, some said. A menthol stick, said others. Baby shampoo. His acting ability. Why didn’t he cry on other occasions, they demanded? (Never mind that he has, and that he’s gotten more emotional with each new horrific spasm of gun violence.)
Many bluntly called him a fraud.
I suppose I should be grateful that at least we’re not talking about male tears as emasculating, as they were when Ed Muskie’s 1972 Democratic presidential campaign essentially ended after he cried at a New Hampshire campaign stop.
Tears now are generally seen as humanizing a leader. But not for Obama.
Former Speaker of the House John Boehner was renowned for crying jags, most famously when Pope Francis visited in September. No one questioned whether Boehner’s shows of emotion were genuine.
Ditto George W. Bush, who cried at a posthumous Medal of Honor ceremony when he was president. And Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, now the majority leader, who said a teary goodbye to New Hampshire colleague Judd Gregg on the Senate floor in 2010.
So, what’s different about Obama?
You could argue that the withering criticism was an indication of the intensity of the gun control debate, where pretty much anything goes.
But something more odious is at work here. Using Obama’s tears to label him a fraud is part of the narrative his critics have been spinning for years: This is not a legitimate president.
And the latest charge is every bit as fictitious as what came before.
He’s not really an American, they say, because he wasn’t born on our shores.
He’s not really a Christian, they say, he’s a Muslim.
He doesn’t really love America, as Rudy Giuliani slimed, because he wasn’t brought up the way the rest of us were.
He really wants to destroy the Constitution, they say, because he’s coming for your guns.
At Thursday’s town hall, several people questioned his real motive for executive action.
At times, the disrespect has been stunning, most notably when South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson shouted, “You lie!” during Obama’s 2009 speech to Congress, in relation to whether illegal immigrants could get insurance under Obama’s health care reforms. Wilson apologized later, and his claim that Obama was lying was rated false by the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking group, PolitiFact.
In a way, the president can’t win. He gets slammed for crying AND for being no-drama Obama. Which, if you think about it, makes last week’s tears all the more compelling.
His de-legitimizers won’t rest until he’s gone. But if he’s succeeded by Hillary Clinton, get ready for another odious narrative.
Michael Dobie is a member of Newsday’s editorial board.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
