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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

A Message From The White House: "Take Off The Pajamas!"

By The Daily Dish
Oct 12 2009, 11:13 AM ET

So now we see how they really feel. John Harwood reports:

And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.

So the president who was elected in part by the blogosphere is now at war with the blogosphere? Not smart, guys. We know "governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult." We also know that a civil rights movement waits for no-one. Do you recall a candidate who used the term "the fierce urgency of now"? To dismiss the younger generation's civil rights movement with the classic swipe of the coopted MSM is so culturally and politically off-base it shows how far the Obama machine has come from its moorings.

And again, what is "left" about civil rights? They are neither right nor left; they are civil rights. What is "left" about serving your country? It isn't right or left, it's patriotism and courage. What is "left" about civil marriage? It's neither right nor left, it's about love and commitment and responsibility for one another. Do only leftists get married? Please. We are not on the left or the right; we are bang in the middle of your families and your country and we refuse to be treated as second class human beings any more.

This lame attempt to dismiss a genuine and impassioned argument for equality from a new generation is par for the Emanuel course. But it remains the old politics that Obama ran against not for. What the White House would be better off doing is congratulating these young marchers and protestors for taking Obama seriously and at his word and holding him accountable. That's called democracy in action.

Or when he said "we are the ones we've been waiting for," did he actually mean just him?



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