We’ll get to the tweet presently. First a few words from The Wilderness. That’s the name of a blog (h/t Jonah Goldberg), and a post there today will appeal to fans of alternative realities, of which I am one.
The post has the curious title “Rough start: President Romney parties while Ferguson burns” and begins:
Two years ago, the country did what at the time seemed to be he unthinkable. It made Barack Obama, our first African American President a one term, lame duck and elected Mitt Romney. Despite a long and often times petty campaign, the country came together and rallied around the guy who made his career on Wall St. based on the promise of a new and brighter America, tired of empty soaring rhetoric. It was a similar promise George W. Bush made just one President ago. Romney vowed to be a different kind of Conservative. More moderate and someone who could reach across the aisle.
However only two short years in it’s becoming more and more tragically clear every day that this is George W. Bush’s third term.
You get the picture. All of the failures of the Obama presidency — the anemic recovery, the expansion of the entitlement state, the runaway growth of the national debt, the decline in America’s standing abroad — are on another president’s watch.
The fantasy switches to a more immediate topic with this:
A community was torn apart and racial tensions boiled over when an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown, about to start college, was shot by a police officer in an incident reminiscent of the Trayvon Martin’s shooting. It has all but erupted into a symbolic conflict of the current state of poverty, race and the militarization of local police forces. Shortly before the 2012 election, Barack Obama urged calm and unity surrounding the death of Martin, urging protesters to allow the system to work. The country rejected him for it. Now we have another Republican President and another dead youth of color and a national community angry and searching for answers.
[…]
While police officers were firing off tear gas canisters and arresting reporters …, Romney was not in the White House situation room, or meeting with Attorney General Portman or Vice President Ryan (Who is halfway across the world meeting with Netanyahu). No, the President who overcame his image as an out of touch one percenter was having dinner at a golf club on Martha’s Vineyard.
Which brings us back to the tweet. It comes courtesy of Eric Schultz, who is acting Press Secretary while Josh Earnest is off on paternity leave:
Readout of tonight’s social gathering coming shortly – spoiler alert: a good time was had by all.
— Eric Schultz (@Schultz44) August 14, 2014
Almost immediately, reality (the real reality) began to flood back on Twitter:
‘A good time was head by all’ @Schultz44 RT @politico: U.S. Yazidis tell of Iraq beheadings http://t.co/DluVTAl86v — S.M (@redsteeze) August 14, 2014
Schultz rushed back to his keyboard and offered this.
The President was briefed tonight by Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett and Attorney General Eric Holder on the situation in Ferguson.
— Eric Schultz (@Schultz44) August 14, 2014
Suggestions for quotes over the entrance of the someday-to-be-built Obama library? My recommendation: “Too little, too late.”
