Perfect put down

AFTER Obama's speech last night, I briefly watched the talking heads bloviate on CNN. From the insular bubble of Washington's mindset, David Gergen (whom I usually like) pompously questioned the speech's intellectual timbre.

Now a Harvard professor, he graded it as if scoring a college term paper (he reluctantly gave Obama a B+ for effort). More amazing, Gergen seemed convinced the speech wouldn't resonate with the nation. I just shook my head and changed channels.

Over at The New Republic this morning, Noam Sheiber wasn't satisfied either: "I found myself reacting well to the speech emotionally even if it didn't always hang together for me intellectually."

Aghast at Scheiber's tone-deafness, one reader responded this way: "Noam, I suspect, had you been there, the Gettysburg Address would have left you 'a bit unsatisfied.' I mean, it was short, way short, Lincoln had hardly got going before it was over. So many issues he didn't cover. He failed to acknowledge all the dignatories present. And he scribbled it out on an envelope. How tacky."

Ha! Perfect. Thank you, dear reader, for the slap upside Scheiber's (and by extension, Gergen's) learned head.