A somber Memorial, Barack Obama style

You can see it on Drudge but not on Fox News. Even the dead do not escape the consummate self-centered President Barack Obama, whose astro-turfers could not pass the opportunity of dressing the backs of chairs at the memorial venue for all those who lost their lives in the Arizona tragedy with t-shirts emblazoned with the eternally campaigning Obama’s latest slogan.

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“Together we Thrive:Tucson & America” not only seems to have replaced “Hope & Change”, it made its inappropriate and tasteless debut at a memorial service that looked much more campaign rally than a memorial paying respects to Saturday’s dead. The dead don’t know their last farewell came in a blaze of blue and white sloganeering, but their heartbroken and grieving loved ones do. Word this morning indicates the idea for the tacky t-shirts originated with University of Arizona brass. Whether astro-turfed or university initiated, Obama basked in it. Obama entered the stadium to deafening applause. Was it, too, orchestrated by university brass? Wearing their most appropriate in-sympathy countenance, both Obamas walked in to the McKale Memorial Center on the University of Arizona campus Wednesday in condolence mode. During the speech that media pundits forecast would lead to a new, more centrist president, incredibly the audience screamed out to Obama, “We love you!” There were resounding cheers for unpopular Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Popular Governor Jan Brewer was booed. Most Surrealistically of all, Attorney General Holder, of “Americans are cowards” fame read the 2nd letter of Paul to the Corinthians. There were real life American heroes killed and wounded in the gunfire of Saturday’s crazed gunman. “Dorwin Stoddard, 76, fell on top of his wife Mavy, when the shooting started. Mavy Stoddard thought the shooting was fireworks in front of the supermarket, but Dorwin knew better and dove to the ground, covering his wife. Mavy Stoddard didn’t know that she had been shot in the leg three times because her husband had fallen on her, said Mike Nowak, pastor of the church that the couple attended. Mavy Stoddard talked to her husband, who was shot in the head, for 10 minutes while he breathed heavily. Then he stopped breathing.” (Yahoo News Jan. 8, 2011) “George Morris is a former Marine and retired airline pilot. His wife, Dorothy, was killed in Saturday’s shooting. Morris remains hospitalized after suffering two gunshot wounds. One of the couple’s daughters said George Morris tried to protect his wife of 50 years by throwing her to the ground and trying to get on top of her to shield her. The couple both grew up in Reno, Nev., and were high school sweethearts. They settled in Oro Valley, Ariz., around 1995. Sue Blinman, who lives next door in a retirement community, said the couple traveled extensively and escaped Tucson’s summer heat by heading up to their home in the eastern Arizona mountain community of Pinetop. `They were always good neighbors,’ Blinman said.” Obama, who admittedly gets his spiritual devotionals in text messages sent to his Blackberry by Joshua DuBois, the head of his Office of Faith Based & Neighborhood Partnership, quoted from scripture. From Obama’s speech: “Scripture tells us that there is evil in the worlds and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, ‘when I looked for light, then came darkness.’ Bad things happen and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.” You got that right, Mr. President.