Mark Finkelstein devotes a July 17 NewsBusters post to an anti-Obama rant:
But enough about me. Let’s talk about how you feel about me . . . Maybe Barack Obama should modify his famous New Age-y line, uttered after the 2008 Super Tuesday results, to read “I am the one I have been waiting for.” In recent times, it’s become an entertaining parlor game to count the number of self references in President Obama’s public statements.
The latest opportunity to play the game comes via a fund-raising email the prez sent out this morning. Defiantly entitled “I Won’t Apologize,” the short message contains by my count no fewer than 11 self-references [12 if you count the URL for the fund-raising link]—a self-adoring assortment of I, I’m, I’ll and me. View the complete email after the jump.
Why would a man with such a sorry record in office have such high self-regard? Let’s hear from our armchair psychoanalysts out there!
This follows in the footsteps of CNS’ Terry Jeffrey — like NewsBusters a division of the Media Research Center — who has a similar obsession with how often Obama refers to himself in the first person, despite the fact that it’s hardly out of line with previous presidents. Like Jeffrey, we don’t recall Finkelstein showing concern over the first-person usage of Republican presidents.
Someone should also remind Finkelstein of the mission of the organization that publishes him. It’s supposed to be a media watchdog, not a place for right-wing rants, which would seem to jeopardize the Media Research Center’s nonprofit tax status.
Perhaps Finkelstein should stick to media issues, like whether Matt Lauer is secretly showing support for Palestinians by wearing a scarf.