OPINION:
Last week liberals and President Obama’s nanny, the legacy media, got very, very upset. Was it about reports that the Islamic State is now suspected of harvesting the organs of its victims that so challenged their emotional equilibrium? Or was it their concern about the continuing spread of measles here at home, thought eradicated in 2000? The deadly drug-resistant “nightmare” superbug CRE infection at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center? Moscow and NATO being on a “collision course” over the failure in Ukraine? How about the pro-ISIS and Jew-hating graffiti plaguing Washington, D.C?
No, it wasn’t any of those events that sent the liberal establishment into a tizzy. Instead, it was the craven act of an American man expressing a negative opinion about Barack Obama. It’s as though speaking negatively about Mr. Obama is now the equivalent of drawing a cartoon of Muhammad.
The latest liberal faux outrage surrounds former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, dubbed “America’s Mayor” after his stellar leadership in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, after he dared to express his opinion at a private dinner that he didn’t think Mr. Obama loved America.
You can agree or disagree, but that’s all it is, an opinion about a man who has spent more than six years in the presidency managing with his own actions and statements to give serious people the impression that he’s not exactly fond of his own country.
I’m not convinced we even need a president to love us per se, but if you’re going to choose someone to make life-and-death decisions and determine the future for more than 300 million people, it’s helpful if you choose a guy who at least thinks your way of life is worth saving, and that you, too, are pretty fabulous.
I do know it’s imperative that he or she, at the very least, like us. And when considering, in context, Mr. Obama’s political career, statements, lies (“You can keep your health insurance if you like it”), and actions here at home and abroad, it’s pretty obvious, as one best-selling self-help book for single women explained about men who aren’t making an effort, he’s just not that into us.
While Mr. Obama’s machine would very much like you to think the most important global news of the last five years is Mr. Giuliani uttering his judgment about the president, the real story is the pathologically absurd reaction to it. Shakespeare is pointing and laughing right now at the urgency with which Mr. Obama’s public guard doth protest too much.
Normally no one wouldn’t mistake Mr. Giuliani for a giant shiny squirrel, but in part that’s exactly what liberals are hoping he’ll be. It’s certainly preferable to have the Big News be about someone being mean to Mr. Obama, instead of the horror of the Kafkaesque situation unfolding around the world with ISIS, the Obamacare tax debacle, almost 20 percent of American households being reliant on food stamps, 92.8 million Americans not in the workforce, or, as The Washington Times has reported, the director of Homeland Security confirming that terror cells are now in America with “a desire to conduct an attack.”
Who needs all that when you’ve got Mr. Rudy Mean Meanie Mean to berate?
Yet, the firestorm of rage and even panic among the establishment’s liberal cabal reveals what Mr. Obama’s sycophants are really worried about: the hoi polloi finally feeling free to speak their minds about Dear Leader.
One striking example of the tsunami of the legacy media’s sanctimonious pearl-clutching about the issue comes from the National Journal’s Ron Fournier. On CNN he was beside himself over Mr. Giuliani’s comments:
“You can be as opposed to the president of the United States as you want to be, you don’t say that anybody in this country, much less the president of the United States, doesn’t love the country. Unless you can prove it. That is deplorable, that is wrong. Um, I actually think, you could almost say, it’s unpatriotic to accuse somebody else of not loving the country … . Also, I think it can be kind of dangerous. We can’t have a country where half the public thinks the president doesn’t love their country. It’s not healthy.”
Actually, there is something unhealthy going on here: an effort to intimidate and bully the American people into silence.
Mr. Fournier, of course, is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of panic. A simple Google search conjures up an image of the liberal establishment frozen in their own hellish “Scream” portrait as they realize there’s a crack in the rule that “One must not speak ill of the light-bringer.”
So as you read self-righteous headlines condemning Mr. Giuliani for having an opinion, and listen to news harpies lecture the American people about how dangerous it is to utter doubt about Mr. Obama’s intentions, remember this: What’s genuinely dangerous is being in a country where you’re condemned for having an opinion about a politician.
• Tammy Bruce is a radio talk-show host, author and Fox News contributor.
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