Obama Presents Medals of Freedom; Rightbloggers Predictably Enraged (Updated)
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Yesterday afternoon President Obama bestowed the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, on 16 notables including Billie Jean King, Chita Rivera, Stephen Hawking, Sidney Poitier, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, Edward Kennedy, the late Jack Kemp (whose widow accepted the medal) and the late Harvey Milk (who was represented by his nephew Stuart Milk).
Conservatives maintained, as they did upon its announcement, the dignity of the occasion. "Mr. President Why Did You Give a Medal to TWO JEW HATERS Today?" reflected Yid With Lid, referring to Robinson and South African anti-apartheid crusader Bishop Desmond Tutu. "Giving [Robinson] a medal will be added to the list of Obama screw ups that demonstrate Obama and the Democrats should not be reelected," said Prairie Pundit.
At National Review, Iain Murray in a series of posts explained why Hawking was stupid and wrong to praise the British National Health Service for saving his life*.
"The list of this year's recipients of the Medal of Freedom reads like the guest list at a liberal fund raiser," said Say Anything. "Awarding the medal to these three malcontents [Robinson, Kennedy, and civil rights activist Reverend Joseph Lowery] diminishes the prestige of the award," said No Sheeples Here. The Weekly Standard reminisced on the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne.
"The United States must live with the fact that, thanks to the poor judgment of a small majority of its voters, it will be the world's laughing stock until January 2013 at the earliest," says Israpundit.
Also, Obama did not accurately portray at the event the number of tennis titles King won. "This screw up on the part of the President and his handlers is a metaphor for his Presidency," observed Scared Monkeys.
*Update: A commenter finds our characterization "dishonest," and says Murray admits that NHS does some things well though "they also can be a poor quality, bureaucratic nightmare." This is admittedly generous of him, at least relative to the abusiveness of his colleagues, but in the last post especially Murray clearly attempts to refute Hawking's implication that he would have died without the help of the NHS, and to attribute Hawking's survival instead to good old American know-how. Murray's effort to look polite which doing so does not distract us from his intent. Photo via whitehouse.gov.
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