Obama in history

Obama in history
When you visit the White House, be sure to enjoy the airbrushing.
by John Hayward
05/15/2012

Today’s nugget of comedy gold was unearthed by Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, who noticed that Team Obama has begun inserting references to Dear Leader in the biographies of his predecessors at the official WhiteHouse.gov website.

The example Cooper focused upon was particularly egregious, as it attempts to compare President Downgrade’s pathetic “Buffett Rule” distraction with the Gipper’s leadership. At the bottom of Ronald Reagan’s biography page, you’ll find this little nugget of Obama graffiti: “In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.”

Yeah, Ronald Reagan was all about fiscally irrelevant class warfare alternative taxes, designed to penalize people for complying with our impenetrable tax code! Obama is also congratulated for honoring the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which Reagan designated a national holiday. I guess Reagan’s other successors found that difficult for some reason.

Seth Mandel at Commentary followed up and found many more of these little “Did you know?” insertions, which appear to begin with Calvin Coolidge, who helped create the progenitor of the Federal Communications Commission. That makes him just like our historic President Obama, who “became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.”

I’m not kidding. They really scribbled that at the bottom of Silent Cal’s biography. Click here to see for yourself, assuming the White House team hasn’t sheepishly removed it by now.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air took the trouble of preparing a comprehensive list of this historical vandalism. Some of them are insulting, while others list highly debatable “Obama achievements.” I don’t think I can quibble with Ed’s choice of the most pitiful entry.

A rollicking “Obama In History” game of round-robin mockery erupted on Twitter, that fabled social media service conceived by Calvin Coolidge and made significant by Barack Obama. I suggested adding a blurb to Abraham Lincoln’s biography, saluting the Emancipation Proclamation as history’s second gutsiest call.

Update: The Republican National Committee set up a Tumblr page to have some Photoshop fun with the "Obama in history" narrative. Here he is on V-J Day:
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.