On Face the Nation today, Rudy Giuliani insisted Al Sharpton visited Obama at the White House 40 times, which is ironclad “evidence” that Obama is responsible for a demonstrably mentally ill person shooting his wife, driving up to New York City, murdering two cops and then killing himself. Setting aside leaps of logic that Evel Knievel couldn’t have made, this “Al Sharpton visits the White House X number of outrageous times" is a new right-wing talking point. And I first received it as a “gift” at Christmas dinner, lucky me.
As we progressed through a very nice meal on Thursday, my brother-in-law stated, out of the blue, that Sharpton had been at the White House 90 times. I scoffed but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it for the sake of everyone’s digestion. Well, the more I thought about it later, the more it stuck in my craw. I've been e-mailing my sister-in-law since then and the latest is that my BIL now says it's 83 times because . . . wait for it . . . Sean Hannity said there was documentation of it on his radio show. I replied by asking what this documentation was and where it was and can we see it? I’m sure you can guess where that’s going to go, and it isn’t going to be print screens of the White House visitor’s log with the signature of AL Sharpton highlighted and numbered on the website of Fox “News.”
In the same e-mail response, I also did some math (if this kind of thing bores you or if you’re a Republican you probably won’t be able to follow this, so you can skip the next paragraph):
Obama has been in office about six years -- actually less than that since his inauguration was January 20, 2009 -- but let's use the 6-year number, anyway. That's a total of 2,190 days. For the 83 visits my BIL is now contending is the right number, that would mean Sharpton would have had to visit the White House every 26 days. That's more than once a month. And, of course, that doesn't take into account all the time Obama is away from the White House -- on diplomatic trips abroad, traveling the country, and yes, even the well-earned vacations he takes that people like Sean Hannity demonize him for. According to Wikipedia, Obama has been on 38 international trips and visited 46 of 50 states. Let's assume, on average, each trip was three days. That's 38 plus 46 times 3 or 252 days. His vacation days were 138 as of this summer plus the 16 days he'll be away in Hawaii for Christmas is 154 (and yes, that's less than any President since Jimmy Carter). That's a total of 406 days. So the total available time for Sharpton to have these super secret special audiences with Obama in the White House would be 2190 minus 406 or 1784 days. Divide this by 83 and you get that Sharpton, despite doing a TV show five nights a week in New York, plus doing a radio talk show five days a week, somehow managed to get to the White House in Washington, DC every 21 days for six years. And then throw in Obama's schedule -- it's not like even when Obama is in the White House he's sitting around waiting for Sharpton to show up because he's got nothing else to keep himself occupied -- and it becomes physically impossible. I'm guessing there are members of Obama's cabinet that he hasn't met with 83 times. It's an utterly ridiculous contention.
And the fact the number is 90 one time, 83 another and then down to 40 is very reminiscent of the number of Communists Joe McCarthy kept saying were in the State Department on any given day.
Of course, I'm expecting crickets back.
My sister-in-law also made a statement at Christmas dinner about Obama being "racially divisive." I called her on that in another e-mail and asked which speeches or which specific policies were racially-based (I said, it's not like the ACA only covers Asian Americans or something). Of course, she didn't have specifics, just a list of how her family had helped black people (a variation of "I'm not a bigot because I have a black friend") and that she'd hoped when Obama was elected he could bring people together over the issue of race but he'd failed at that. I informed her that the racism was coming from the other side and proceeded to give her some examples I'm sure she's never heard of from watching Fox "News" or listening to Rush, and I told her that blaming Obama for the current racial climate is like blaming the Civil Rights protestors for the property damage caused by the fire hoses.
I suppose with these e-mails I'm basically peeing down my leg and thinking it's raining, but I felt better, at least briefly.
Ah, the holidays and family. Nothing like it.