This kind of unbelievable comment here on Daily Kos on the DOMA decision came to my attention (emphasis mine):
At the risk of sounding pissy, which I'm not trying to be, has the Gay rights community here that was at times really kind of nasty, anti-Obama come around yet, issued any half-hearted apologies for some of the inflated rhetoric.
I know it can be frustrating when people tell you to just be patient, have a little faith in his stated principles, give it to the second half of this term to see some serious forward movement .. but there were some of us who were trying to speak a little wisdom to the anxiety who along with the President were routinely vilified as insensitive or out of touch at best, and homophobes at worst .. and I'd just like to point out that this President has now firmly put himself on the path to becoming the more progressive President, with regard to LGBT issues we've ever seen.
Can some of us stalwart defenders of the President, maybe, possibly, if it is okay with other posters, take just the tiniest bow at having some of our faith justified .. maybe, pretty please ...
Really? The gays should apologize and the "stalwart defenders of the President" should take a bow? Because Obama finally did what the gays were asking, begging, pleading, petitioning and demanding him to do and "stalwart defenders of the President" insisted over and over that he couldn't and shouldn't do?
Really?!!
I wasn't going to remark on the elephant in the room. Like that commenter, I too feared risking sounding pissing. In fact, you'll see focused my concentration on praising the administration for doing right, here and here and here, and not the nasty water under the bridge.
But Glenn Greenwald brought up some of the nasty water that went under the bridge.
Glenn doesn't think the "stalwart defenders" should be pleased with themselves, he thinks they should be pissed at the President, if they believed a word they'd been saying the last two years:
But for those loyal Obama supporters who spent two years defending the administration's DOMA position on this ground: if they have even a minimal amount of intellectual honestly, shouldn't they now criticize the President's reversal, this new refusal to defend DOMA? If they really believed what they were saying for the last two years -- that a President is required to defend the constitutionality of all statutes -- then shouldn't they be vocally condemning Obama now for doing exactly that which they insisted he has no power to do? Of course -- as the torture photo and civilian trial controversies also demonstrated -- one of the joys of partisan fealty and devotion to a leader is that one need not have any actual beliefs or positions: you get to say whatever you need to say at any given moment to justify the leader's conduct, even if it completely contradicts what you said months or weeks earlier in service of the same objective. Justifying the leader's behavior is the sole prism through which the entire political world is viewed; one is blissfully liberated from the need to formulate any actual views or principles.
Indeed, the time that the gay community was openly lobbying for Obama to make the very move he made this week, many insisted with absolute certainty that it was an impossibility.
Eventually these "stalwart defenders" became confronted with hard evidence that it was within administration powers to drop the defense. But that didn't matter, it seemed to have become a Zombie Lie.
And eventually, that became less tenable, and the tactics changed. People who took the position that the DOJ should stop defending DOMA were told:
- They just weren't being pragmatic.
- They didn't understand politics.
- They were infantile.
- They didn't understand the law.
- They were whining for a unicorn.
- They were told they apparently believed Obama had a magic wand.
- They were told in sneering tones that they were asking Obama to "politicize" the DOJ.
- They were told if Obama did this, "he'd be just like Bush."
- They were told we were expecting him to act like a dictator.
And then, Obama got out his magic wand, behaved like a dictator--like Bush--and miraculously delivered a beautiful unicorn to the gays. Oops.
And now that poster wants "stalwart defenders of the President" to take a bow for Obama's decision to do what they insisted he couldn't and shouldn't do? Really?!?
Can some of us stalwart defenders of the President, take just the tiniest bow at having some of our faith justified.
We call that
chutzpah here in New York City. It's one thing to be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, as the "stalwart defenders of the President" clearly were. Everyone is sometimes, myself included. But it's another thing entirely to be asking for those who
were right to apologize and credit the shameless, non-stop excuse-making as a mechanism that prompted Wednesday's stunning reversal to come to pass.
And of course, Glenn's right, "if they have even a minimal amount of intellectual honestly, shouldn't they now criticize the President's reversal, this new refusal to defend DOMA?"
Where they right then? Is he politicizing the DOJ? Is he acting like Bush, like a unitarian executive. The right is now saying so. Who handed them the talking points? Those of us who asked the DOJ to drop the suit never thought there was any merit in those talking points. But the "stalwart defenders of the President," having pushed them relentlessly, clearly believed they had merit.
Or did they?
Rhetoric gets heated.
But absent the concerted outcries from the gay rights community, from Daily Kos, to GetEqual to John Aravois to Jonathan Turley to Howard Dean, it really can't be taken for granted Wednesday's reversal would ever have taken place. In truth, no one knows.
But it's absurd to suggest "the stalwart defenders of the President's" "faith" in him made this happen and they should even "take just the tiniest bow."
So, when that poster says:
Gay rights community here that was at times really kind of nasty, anti-Obama come around yet, issued any half-hearted apologies for some of the inflated rhetoric.
I agree. Some rhetoric got heated.
But it isn't the gay rights community who are obliged to offer any apologies.
An important update here, and a message I certainly hope we can all agree on.