Israel Matzav

'You're so vain'

When I was in high school, there was a popular song called 'You're so vain.' It was sung by Carly Simon and it brings back personal memories for me because when I was a youth group Chapter President, my Chapter made up a song about me to its tune, which made it to the national finals (we lost because our kids cracked up in the middle - we had beaten the Chapter that won at our regional convention).

For the record, my dreams were alleged to be 'beans in my cholent,' just so you get the idea....

Let's go to the videotape and then I'll explain why this song comes to mind.



Last week, Barack and Michelle Obama went to Copenhagen to pitch the Olympics for the City of Chicago. We all got a good laugh when they lost (well, at least I did, even if Chicago is Mrs. Carl's home town), but no one really paid much attention to what they said. George Will did. And he reports that one reason Chicago may have lost is that the Obamas' speeches were about... themselves. Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about . . . themselves.

Although the working of the committee's mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago's bid for the 2016 Games on aesthetic grounds -- unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.

In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences conveyed the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.

In 2008, Obama carried the three congressional districts that contain Northern California's Silicon Valley with 73.1, 69.6 and 68.4 percent of the vote. Surely the Valley could continue its service to him by designing software for his speechwriters' computers that would delete those personal pronouns, replacing them with the word "sauerkraut" to underscore the antic nature of their excessive appearances.

And -- this will be trickier -- the software should delete the most egregious cliches sprinkled around by the tin-eared employees in the White House speechwriting shop. The president told the Olympic committee that: "At this defining moment," a moment "when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations" in "this ever-shrinking world," he aspires to "forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world."

Good grief. The memory of man runneth not to a moment that escaped being declared "defining" -- declared such by someone seeking to inflate himself by inflating it. Also, enough already with the "shrinking" world, which has been so described at least since Magellan set sail, and probably before that. And by the way, the "fate" of -- to pick a nation at random -- Chile is not really in any meaningful sense "inextricably linked" to that of, say, Chad.

Read the whole thing.

Over at Power Line, Scott Johnson hit the nail on the head as to why President Obama's outsized ego ought to bother Americans.

I thought that the IOC's decisive rejection of Chicago for the 2016 Olympics was a small price to pay to provide President Obama with what he might otherwise call (Lord, forgive me) "a teachable moment." Surely President Obama might learn from it without having done great harm to the national security of the United States something about the limits of narcissism. It is a lesson he badly needs to learn, and fast.

But of course, President Obama has learned nothing from his rejection by the IOC. He and his fellow Chicago Democratic cronies are already blaming President Bush for Chicago's rejection. Yes, of course, an egomaniac can never to be blame for his own faults, can he?

By the way, Scott points out this priceless tidbit.

Mrs. Obama also earned extra credit with her Olympic memory of sitting on her father's lap to watch Carl Lewis compete when she would have been 20 years old.

Heh. By the way, Michelle wasn't too proud of America back then if she was already 20, was she? But I'll bet Carl Lewis was proud of America when he won all those medals for it.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:05 PM