Is Valerie Jarrett Really as Simple-Minded as She Seems?
Posted: August 6, 2011 Filed under: Surreality, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, compromise, cooperation, integration, lies, michelle obama, Ruby Bridges, The Chicago Way, Valerie Jarrett 26 Comments
Yesterday Special Adviser to the President for intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement Valerie Jarrett contributed a blog to the Huffington Post entitled Why I’m Proud to Be Part of President Obama’s Team.
In the piece, she alternates reminiscences of her relationship with Barack and Michelle Obama with little homilies describing her feelings about her former protegee and now boss. Honestly, this woman comes across as about as politically sophisticated as an eighth-grader.
She begins by describing how she met the Obamas, and then shares her first uninspiring homily:
Today, President Obama is managing our nation’s challenges with the courage, wisdom, and compassion that I’ve seen time and time again over our two decades of friendship.
Really? She offers no specific examples of Obama’s “courage, wisdom, and compassion,” so I have no idea what she is referring to here.
Next Jarrett explains that her friend Barack always had a “remarkable clarity of vision, and an abiding faith in the power of ordinary individuals to do extraordinary things.” He grew up with people of other cultures, so he learned how to bring people together–or something. I think that’s her point.
That belief has been one of the driving forces behind President Obama’s career. Since his time as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, he has always held firm to his principles, but has also understood the importance of working towards the art of the possible. He knows that true leaders never let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
What do you suppose these “principles” are that Obama has “held firm to?” Jarrett doesn’t say. She certainly can mean that he has delivered on his promises, because he’s broken just about every one of them–except for his promise to “reform” Social Security.
The president has also always believed that a leader’s job is to act on behalf of the people he serves, not to score political points. Every day, he receives letters and emails from Americans who are doing everything in their power to solve the tremendous challenges they face. As long as President Obama is in the White House, he will listen to those Americans, and they will have a voice here in Washington. The president will never stop fighting on their behalf.
Do these letters and e-mails come from Wall Street insiders? Surely Jarrett cannot believe that Obama has listened to the concerns of poor, working-class, or middle-class Americans. Presumably, she is not a stupid person. She has a law degree and and undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford University.
Mr. Obama “is determined to change the tone” in Washington, she tells us. Apparently As an example of this, she relates a little parable about Obama welcoming Ruby Bridges the to the White House. Ruby Bridges was a little girl whose parents volunteered her to help integrate the New Orleans school system in 1960. She was “the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South,” according to Wikipedia.
Ruby Bridges in 1960
And why was this White House visit so significant in demonstrating Obama’s great leadership skills?
The president told Ruby that were it not for her bravery, he might not be in the White House today.
That moment was a reminder that in my lifetime, we have made progress my parents and grandparents could barely have imagined. Through acts of courage large and small, Americans have chosen unity over division.
And besides, the Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby surrounded by Federal Marshals is now “on display outside the Oval Office!” {Gasp!}
People like Ruby “inspire the President,” Jarrett tells us. And Jarrett is inspired because after Obama’s speech last Monday
thousands upon thousands of citizens answered the president’s call, and proudly voiced their support for a balanced approach – not just to our deficits, but to our politics as a whole.
But they didn’t get a “balanced approach.” They got cuts to programs that affect the most needy Americans as well as the middle class and no increases in revenues. So what is Jarrett’s point here? Does she really believe this garbage? Does she expect people to read this article and not laugh at her? Is the woman really as simple-minded as she seems?
I’m not sure what Valerie Jarrett actually does in her job. My impression is that she is a highly paid “friend” who hangs around with Obama and flatters him. But perhaps “public engagement” in her job title translates to “propaganda minister?” If so, she’s not very good at her job. A child could see through her facile lies.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
YES
Do you have inside information? I get the feeling her main job is to hang out with Obama and flatter him.
No, only my opinion from what I have read about her
In 2008, Al Sharpton talked about Jarrett’s role as a liaison to African American leaders.
BB, you think too much – that’s the problem with all folks who do not visualize Obama as the great communicator – they think too much. If Jarret is coming out of the closet to tout the wonderfulness of the man – what does that signify? Big trouble in little China?
REally appreciated your post.
Thanks. But as propaganda that piece just doesn’t cut it. Too easy to see through.
I was thinking the same thing BB.
As for what Jarrett actually does at the White House…I’m guessing Pillow fluffer and ego polisher extraordinaire?
It puts me in mind of a lady lawyer who was counsel to President Bush. Don’t remember her name. She was always writing him little love notes, telling him how much she loved him (no, not Condaleeza, another one). Bush actually nominated her to be on supreme court, but that fell through, even the republicans couldn’t stomach her. Jarrett seems a little like that other lady. And Obama not so different from Bush.
Harriet Meirs?
Yes, Harriet Meiers
Yes, Harriet Meiers
That’s who I was thinking of…Bush tried to get her on the Supreme Court!!! lol!
Whoa, I was wondering what the campaign was going to look like now that Hope™ has been exposed. But this message looks like we’re just going to get Change 2.0.
One-hit wonders I guess.
lol
We got change alright – only it’s in the wrong direction.
I was really bummed out this week – but about 25 of my best “girlfriends” showed up last night to celebrate my B’day – what a hoot – God bless my hubby for being such a good sport – lots of laughs, good food and just plain silliness – I did ask that no one mention anything government oriented when they arrived. What fun – today, back to reality 😦
Happy Birthday! I’m glad you had fun.
Jarrett’s just the Obama team’s Head Cheerleader. I’m not surprised she comes across as simple-minded. ALL of Obama’s propaganda was always mindshatteringly simple-minded. It’s just that many people failed to notice amid the noise of the OFB’s mass cult bullying and the rock concerts.
The thing is, like the rooster who thinks he brings the sunrise by crowing, Obama et al think their incredibly out of touch, vapid rhetoric was what won him the primaries and the election in 2008. (and not the RBC delegate theft, the caucus fraud, or the drooling media and so on). So now that Obama is clearly in trouble in the polls, they are trotting out the same conversion narratives they taught to their starry-eyed volunteers in ’08. In their minds, there’s nothing to stop it from succeeding again.
And I can’t totally blame them for thinking that. In 2008, whenever the slightest criticism of Obama seemed to be sticking, Axelrod or Jarrett or some other flunky would press-release some similarly ridiculous pablum and the OFB would grab it to go blazing across the web and media with it, repeating it verbatim and ad nauseam. They’re trying to jumpstart the Children of the Corn again. It may take them a while to notice it’s not working. Actually, there are enough of the OFB left (remember Obama’s not quite down to GWB’s 30%ers yet) still slavering over Obama that Jarrett et al can probably fool themselves for a quite a long time.
What they haven’t noticed is that people, even a critical number of former Obama-worshippers, have stopped listening. It’s especially not going to work for Jarrett, since hardly anyone knows who the hell she is.
Excellent analysis. Thanks!
Beautiful….Absolutely Perfect description of the O’Bots!
Have you seen this? I can’t embed it but Neil Degrasse Tyson tells Bill Maher that Hillary would’ve been better than Maher agrees …
Valerie Jarret reminds me of Condi Rice. She’s got school girl giggles over the president. You think it would bug Michelle.
One of the articles I read about her said she introduced the Obamas to a wealthier class of Chicagoans. That probably endeared her to both of them.
Whenever I hear Jarrett’s remarkably irritating sing-song voice on the TV, I automatically hit the MUTE button.
I do that whenever ANY of the4 Obamites speak on TV!
0bowma=R was raised among the wealthy. He may have grown up among other cultures but always the common theme is that he remained among the wealthy. His grandparents — grand mom was a banker. His step father — 0bowma-R again found himself among the wealthy. Back to Hawaii — he went to one of the most exclusive high schools — where students had little or no exposure to any island culture except the very very wealthy.
A few years ago I went to a conference in Hawaii — many professors the U. of Hawaii attended. They send their kids to the same private high school attended by 0bowma=R. What I learned was that the Punahoe educated kids did not learn pidgin English and couldn’t speak it. One parent told me that when her son decided to remain in Hawaii he had to learn pidgin English and he was so proud that he could finally speak to the locals in their own language.
For the rest of us — we had to speak and understand pidgin English immediately in order to survive our school years. In the classroom we spoke “Teacher’s English” to the teacher — but all communication among peers was pidgin English.
Point is that 0bowma=R has always had that special mentor who was there to introduce him to the very very wealthy and that is where he feels most comfortable. Even his black wife is a princess of the Chicago Political Machine. There is a class difference among the blacks — the middle and upper middle class blacks mostly had nothing to do with the struggles of the lower economic classes. Bill Cosby has a comedy routine about his own daughters and their up bringing etc. Just because a person is black that can even understand what living in poverty means.
It always irks me when one of 0bowma=R’s pr agents try to explain that he is really a man of the people.
Breaking news — A Navy SEAL team was shot down. Yep — this was the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laudin. All the witnesses to what really happened — gone?
Interesting.
Just what is the good that the perfect is the supposed enemy of, according to Ms. Jarrett?
I see nothing but bad.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com