Siegessäule

Obama will speak in front of the Siegessäule, the Victory Column, topped by a gold angel but possibly an even more militaristic and Prussian monument than the Brandenburg Gate. Why would he do this? Five theories: First, good name. Second, it’s the next-most-famous landmark in Berlin for Americans who have never been here but may be Wim Wenders fans. Third: a sly jab at the French. The victory column isn’t “fluted,” like Bloomberg says, but carefully ornamented with gilded cannons from the 1871 Franco-Prussian war. Oh yes it is! (Actually they’re cannons from two other wars, too.) Fourth: Obama intends to come out as a gay man. Or a Love Parade raver. Or a Nazi. Or a Turkish guy. Or a soccer fan? Five: Not far from the Brandenburg Gate!

     posted 18 July 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. What’s sad is how few Americans probably get any of the references you made, or will really know/care about the differences in the venues.

    — e    Jul 18, 09:46 pm    #

  2. p.s. Look up the latest Charles Krauthammer piece in the Washington Post. I can’t link to it easy. The gist is that that Obama’s ego hit a snag here…

    — e    Jul 19, 12:21 am    #

  3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071701839.html

    That’s the Krauthammer piece. I challenge anyone to name one substantial line in it. Krauthammer’s a puffball. He blows himself up like a bullfrog, and people get all quivery.

    “What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn.” Wrong. See below. “President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final “tear down this wall’ liquidation.” Wrong. Reagan’s speech was theater. (If Reagan knew in 1987 that the Soviet Union would fall two years later, why was he funding anti-communist death squads in Central America?) “When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.” Yes, but what does that have to do with the Brandenburg Gate? Berlin’s mayor welcomed him and set the itinerary. Berlin’s current mayor welcomed Obama, and liked the idea of a speech at the Brandenburg Gate.

    Krauthammer is just making this shit up. There are no rules like this in Berlin. He’s just inventing stuff to correspond with two big presidential speeches in Berlin that he and his readers remember with some measure of awe. But Bill Clinton spoke in front of the Brandenburg Gate in 1994 without any of these supposed qualifications. No one remembers the speech. So why isn’t it possible that Obama just wants to be a new Clinton (not such a vaulting ambition)? Krauthammer doesn’t bring this up because it does him no good rhetorically.

    When you set up “Barack Obama” as a hollow piñata, you can take as many whacks with your cane as you like, and the converted will cheer. The problem for Krauthammer is that Obama has started to say substantial things. Watch the half-hour speech on foreign policy I posted below. He lays it all out in plain, unadorned, un-tricky English. Just because a man can speak in coherent sentences doesn’t mean he has nothing to say. I’m not about to argue that Obama has no ego, but sooner or later people will realize that his critics haven’t even begun to answer him back.

    — Mike    Jul 19, 02:27 am    #

  4. I apologize that I didn’t look at the links closer. My bad. I’m very old fashioned and tend to veer towards things in print better than links…terrible habit my wife and daughter are trying to break me of…

    Call me crazy, but I think the Krauthammer piece was kind of a Trojan Horse. Let’s see if this sticks.

    I forgot about the 1994 Clinton speech. Very good reference. I would also take one of your allegories (is that right?) a step further, and remind people that only the blind swing at Pinatas.

    e

    — e    Jul 19, 12:56 pm    #

  5. Oh by the end there I was arguing with Krauthammer, not you.

    — Mike    Jul 19, 01:31 pm    #

  6. Got that. I wanted to argue with him too when I read the Post! Just FYI…the talk radio this morning was all about Obama’s safety in Europe. Well, I mean one show on a conservative network, anyway. This just astounded me. Now the conservatives want him to look reckless while also saying he has never had international or military experience. In a way I was giddy listening to it…it shows how fucked up their whole idea is about beating Obama in November. Can you really run your candidate as a war hero during a war nobody likes? I think not. The conservative talking points are so weak, there is humor in it in a hubris-sort-of way—which makes me nervous.

    — e    Jul 19, 10:48 pm    #

  7. I read that “opinion” piece when it came out (Thursday?) and now am fairly confident it will be the first and last thing I will ever read by one Charles Krauthammer. It WAS 100% content-free except for that hilarious “something you earn” part, which was just unintentionally funny. There was nothing substantially argued or informed or given to the reader except a big ol ball of spin—and poorly written spin at that. I want those 5 minutes of my life back. Where does the Post get these guys? First Novak, now this joker? It seems the Right really is out of ideas these days and going head long into reactionary defense mode.

    — Ben    Jul 20, 09:57 pm    #

  8. Krauthammer’s won a Pulitzer, which doesn’t keep him from being silly. He’s clever, but these days he has an instinct for saying the political instead of the true thing.

    Example:

    http://www.radiofreemike.com/2006/04/krauthammer-commie.html

    — Mike    Jul 20, 10:07 pm    #

  9. Wonders never cease. I thought I’d heard the name before, but a Pulitzer! Maybe its like getting tenure; once you got it you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want.

    — Ben    Jul 21, 04:17 pm    #

  10. Actually I think it’s a function of being in Washington. What you said about Novak was right: Krauthammer's corrupt. Some Washington columnists figure out that their ideas don’t matter, in the "real world," except as far as some political interest requires them to win power.

    — Mike    Jul 21, 05:45 pm    #

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