Why is there so much outrage over the President's "Starbucks salute". Would it have been better to just ignore the Marine Guard's salute since he had both hands full?

I’m pretty sure the U.S. should tap into its large emergency tissue reserve. I’m thinking that maybe 5–6 boxes per month per citizen might be able to mop up the offense-induced tears.

Because there is a significant number of people, led by Fox news, that decided on January 21 2009, that the President can do nothing right. And they speak up about it at every moment, despite the fact that he does “wrong” things to a much lesser extent than his predecessors in office.

It’s not as disrespectful as saluting while holding a dog.

It’s silly. People blame Obama if it is cloudy outside.

The Obama haters makes these things up because it makes them feel better..

The “gravity” of the issue pretty much reflects the depth of the those pimping the would be story. Our country is now a place where a sizable and growing percentage of the voting population would categorize this nonsense as “news”. Fox may be regarded by its peers as a running joke and an insult to journalism, but the network’s success is a very handy gauge on the dumbing down of the country.

Because people are stupid

I’m curious which news orginizations are reporting on this? I often have different sources of news on the television as background noise while I’m busy at home and I haven’t heard anything. I start my morning with Good Morning America, then I’ll have Fox on (I like Shepard Smith) and I also watch local news and sometimes Nightly News with Brian Williams.

The only place I’ve read about complaints is on Facebook, and that’s from the people complaining about the people complaining about Obama.

Who is outraged? I haven’t seen it. just wondering

@jonsblond – now it’s old news. It was headline news earlier this week – I think Tuesday. Do a google search and you will lots of puffed up conservative commentators.

@jonsblond

Had I heard it on Fox, I would have known to pretty much ignore it, but this was the local (Detroit) affiliate for either ABC or CBS. I’m not sure which because the noon newscast is more or less background.

The way I know it was one or the other is because my daytime programs alternate between the two and whichever one I listen to depends upon which show I was previously watching.

(the only Fox I watch is the business channel REAL REAL early in the AM because I like to tape the synopsis of Best of Imus. And he’s definitely not a Fox lackey. He may be an old curmudgeon but he thinks for himself always and manages to snag an interesting lineup of guests.)

But the info and footage on the Obama thing came on the local noon newscast; hence my surprise since I assume that the rest of the networks don’t have such a high opinion of Fox.)

The entire incident took literally two seconds as he spontaneously gestured with coffee cup in hand. So, why it was reported on at all is totally beyond me.

Why is there so much outrage over the President’s “Starbucks salute”? One factor is that there are people in charge of media who salivate when petty stories like these crop up. It increases revenue via circulation. Another factor is that there are many Obama-haters in the US. From what I have witnessed, they tend to latch onto such reports in order to publicly voice their discontent before considering the context of the situation or the bigger picture.

Did you think it was such a horrible choice for him to have made? On the flip side, the discontent may stem from the fact that this is not the first time that President Obama was criticized regarding a salute. One time it was for walking past a soldier without returning a salute (although he did go back and shake the guy’s hand and have a quick chat) and another for returning a salute with a cellphone in hand. For someone habitually in the limelight, how many times does it take to have citizens raising a ruckus before the behavior is corrected?

Did you think it was such a horrible choice for him to have made? What should he have done instead? Horrible? No. Foolish, possibly. Why he would choose to leave a helicopter with a coffee cup in hand knowing that there would be military personnel waiting outside that he would be expected to properly salute is the real question.

Ask if this is news-worthy, then the response would be, “No.” I would rather hear about the results of the mission that he was on.

@zenvelo

Ok. Now you’ve aroused my curiosity. Why is it disrespectful to salute while carrying a dog (presumably under the OTHER arm)?

I’m assuming the reference is to Bush since the Clintons had a big tall Chocolate Lab who wouid have no trouble negotiating those really steep stairs to the helicopter.

Obviously, it’s quite different for Barney with those really short Scotty legs. If Bush didn’t carry him, he’d likely break his neck. So in fairness to him, Bush really didn’t have much choice in the matter. And at least he wasn’t in he habit of carrying him everywhere the way some people with little dogs do. It was basically just those steep stairs.

No, I saw the picture. Bush was cradling the do in both arms. When he went to salute his arm, full of dog, went up and his head went down.

Are these people just so desperate to find any and all criticisms that they’ll stoop to this?
I have no idea what the flap is all about, but it is usually as you said.

@Pied

Those are good points you’ve raised. It is pretty obvious that Obama didn’t spend any time in the military so those habits never got drilled into him.

How many times before the behavior is corrected? Agreed, he could do better (but i’m assuming that he had plenty of other things on his mind other than if he was carrying coffee at the wrong time.

So, at worst he looks careless.

The CONTINUAL refusal of Bush to correct his ridiculous pronounciation of “New-Cue-Ler” (especially when Daddy hired none other than Condileeza Rice to tutor him way back in his early political days when it appeared he might be headed for the National stage.) To think she made no attempt to correct this is simply not possible.

So Bush went further than mere carelessness. He made the President of the US look persistently and willfully ignorant. The guy who has his finger on the nuclear button, at minimal, should learn to pronounce it correctly. It ain’t that hard.

I applaud @hominid ! This is no big deal. It isn’t a “Requirement” to salute if your hands are full.

@Dutchess

Ha ha i see what you mean. That one pic of him with head down is pretty funny. I popped it into Google images.

But he must have learned his lesson because all the others show him with Barney tucked under his left arm while he salutes with the right or he’s carrying Barney on the right while waving to the crowd with his left.

Maybe Laura made him practice it all numerous times until he got it.

(I wish she had done the same with “nuclear” :D

Tempest in a Starbucks cup.

I can’t imagine any real outrage because of that. It was a perfect example of the media saying “things are not stirred up enough, we need some controversy”

Well, maybe Obama won’t get off the plan with his hands full again!

The president is in no way required to salute.

Let’s look at the history of the US President returning a salute to a military person. According to this article,

Doing some research of my own, I found a 2008 Reuters report that said the presidential practice of saluting military members is much newer than the “longstanding tradition” of military members saluting the president, and that some people even think the president shouldn’t salute at all because it militarizes a civilian office and because the president doesn’t wear a uniform.

The article goes on to point out that Ronald Reagan was the one who created the concept that the person holding the title of the US Presidency should return the salute. Here is a Time article giving some background behind Reagan’s intent.

After culling through a couple of PDFs regarding different US military branches’ standards of practice on saluting, I have yet to find that President Obama did anything wrong. I am open to any facts that may prove this to be incorrect.

The hand salute is a military greeting. The President, as Commander-in-Chief, is a civilian. If it were a general, or some other military officer, I could understand the flap, but since he is a civilian, he could wave, tip his hat (if he were wearing one) or just nod and smile. I think it is ignorance on the part of the person who first caught it, coupled with the obvious attempt to ridicule this president by any means.

That says it all, @Pied_Pfeffer. I read a blurb somewhere about a new president getting off the plane for the first time and asking his aide if he needed to salute. The aide said, “You are the president. You do what you want.”

Because he is black and, even after eight years, that still fucks a lot of people up.

Probably.

^^ <ahem> Half Black but it still messes with people.

he did not have both hands full. coffee in one hand and nothing in the other one. check out the video again.

one hand was just holding down his tie. nothing actually in it.

Doesn’t matter @BeenThereSaidThat. He is not required to salute. He could have just walked on by with nothing more than a nod IF he wanted to even do that much. It’s stupid, is what it is.

SOme people think it’s disrespect to military obviously. I don’t think it was but it’s a free country.

“Reagan used to salute the curtains. Are you kidding me?”

-Bill Maher, just now

~Because Obama is a socialist Kenyan Muslim who isn’t legally allowed to run for office, supports terrorists, and is ruining our economy.

Seriously though, most of the people objecting think that most Republicans are liberal RINOs, and that only those at least as far right as Glen Beck are even potentially worthy of being called “Conservatives”. In other words we are not talking about sane, rational people.

“Because he is black and, even after eight years, that still fucks a lot of people up.”

Really, that got 5 GA’s!? W.T.H. Fluther.

Why are you so surprised by a statement of the obvious regarding the consistent undercurrent of racism towards Obama by a persistent contingent of narrow minded bigots in the population at large.?

Remember the caricatures in Blackface held aloft at Tea Party rallies? That was the overt form of it. The rest lies just below the surface like an insidious poison. To those types of people, there’s nothing that Obama can do right, ever.

And it’s all too easy for extreme right-wingers to jump on the bandwagon for reasons more political than purely racial. Admittedly, it’s a mixed bag (but the White Supremacists have never ceased trying to spread their ideology by whatever means they can.)

And obviously a goodly number of Flutherites recognize this and vote accordingly. No surprise there.

People generally don’t hate the man because he is black, they do simply because he is liberal. To the fixed majority of right wing sheep he is the devil. Same goes for the left wing sheep who think he’s some kind of savior. In all reality he has been kind of a mundane, average president. It will be exactly the same in act II when it’s a female in office.

You will never find the name Clinton and the word mundane in the same sentence.

@jonsblond Just wait and see.

been waiting for 6 years :P

@ARE_you_kidding_me The five GA’s (and counting) is a recognition of the truth. And he isn’t that liberal!

@zenvelo that just tells me some people here have a pretty sad and quite honesty disgusting view of the world.

I realize he is not that liberal but it would not matter who it is in office. A card carrying democrat is going to be a target of any right wing group. The reverse is also true.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I don’t know why you are so surprised by the GA’s that some get and others get nothin. I have been on these kinds of websites for over ten years and the Liberal or anti-American answer always gets the most GA’s while anyone with a trace of Conservatism gets either nothing or abuse from the majority. These types of websites are havens for Liberals who all get their talking points directly from the media. Especially the Huffington Post, Media Matters and MSNBC. In a way it is funny and the main reason Conservatives spent so little time on these sites.

I’m not surprised, I have come to expect it here. I just can’t help but point out the partisan idiocy of it all.

@ARE_you_kidding_me @BeenThereSaidThat My own personal opinion is that “the salute” was considered disrespectful by people who voted and opined against full funding of the VA. And just because Ronnie Reagan liked to act like he was a real soldier, it’s perceived as some big deal for the President to salute.

So why blow it out of portion?

We’ve had lots of liberal presidents. I’ve never seen such intense rage directed at one, the way it’s directed toward Obama. The only thing that is different between him, and say Kennedy and Clinton, is the fact that he’s black.

It’s a sign of the times, not because he’s biracial. Look at George Bush, I’m not a fan either but damn, it went pretty far with him too. What has happened is that multimedia has grown. It appears to cause a proportional amount of bullshit and conspiracies along with it. Anything to make a buck, distribute advertisements and rally for…whatever. I personally don’t have any major issues with the president. He’s been kinda average in my book.

@zenvelo I don’t know why the salute was blown out of proportion. It was, no doubt about that. Nothing better to report about I guess.

MOst Reps that I know couldn’t care less if he’s hald black. He acts more Republican now than ever actually.

@KNOWITALL I tend to think so also. The problems the president deals with are real problems that face this country and partisan politics are taking a back seat. If he let ideology get in the way things can get messed up bad. If only the rest of us could learn such a simple concept.