As noted in my previous post, the press is determined that the world not learn of profound statements made by world leaders it despises. The specific reference was to Israeli Prime Mininster Benjamin Netanyahu's five-word admonishment to those who believe that some accommodation can be reached with Islamic terrorists: "Terrorists Have No Resolvable Grievances."
Meanwhile, the press protects those it likes when they make breathtakingly ignorant remarks. Such remarks occur with alarming regularity any time U.S. President Barack Obama speaks without the aid of a teleprompter. In Argentina on Wednesday, during a question-answer exchange with a youth group, Obama said that debates over the superiority of capitalism compared to communism "are interesting intellectual arguments," but that "for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works." Press coverage of Obama's remarks has been sparse.
To reinforce his belief, Obama cited Cuba's education and healthcare systems as models worth emulating — never mind the thousands killed and imprisoned by the Castro regime during its over half-century of dictatorial rule, or communism's worldwide death toll of over 90 million during the twentieth century.
A Google News search on "Obama Argentina communist" (not in quotes, sorted by date, without duplicates) returned only 27 items dated March 23 or later — and that result appears to overstate the coverage, given the overlap from Obama's prior visit to Cuba.
One news organization which was on hand to cover Obama's appearance at the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative Town Hall was the Associated Press. Here is what the AP deigned to tell its readers about that event.
In a dispatch primarily about other aspects of the trip ("Obama, new Argentine leader work to break from past tensions"), Josh Lederman and Peter Prengaman squeezed the following into the very end of the coverage:
... (Obama appeared) at a factory-turned-concert hall where Obama fielded questions from young Argentinians at a town hall meeting. He called on one fawning woman who said she was "going to have a heart attack," adding that "you are my hero." It turned out she didn't actually have a question.
Words fail.
The only other AP coverage of the event I could locate was in a timeline story highlighting how the Obamas did the tango at the Argentina state dinner they attended. the 4:10 p.m. and 3:50 p.m. entries make the case that when it comes to Obama, "AP" really means "Always Praising":
4:10 p.m.
... Obama is speaking at a town hall meeting with Argentine youth. He was asked about the potential for scientific collaboration between Argentina and the U.S., and he cites fighting Zika as an example of an opportunity where nations can pool their resources.
___
3:50 p.m.
President Barack Obama is telling an audience of young Argentines that he's always wanted to visit their country since he was young like they are.
Obama, who is 54 years old, is holding a youth town hall at the Usina del Arte concert hall in Buenos Aires.
Visiting with and taking questions from young people has become a hallmark of Obama's trips abroad.
AP could have improved its coverage and saved the expense of sending reporters to Argentina by simply copying and pasting People Magazine's coverage of the trip.
Here is the video of Obama's remarks via MRCtv.org:
Transcript (bolds are mine):
I believe that that's going to be the wave of the future if we want to make progress on these problems.
I guess to make a broader point, so often in the past there's been a sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist. And especially in the Americas, that's been a big debate, right? Oh, you know, you're a capitalist Yankee dog, and oh, you know, you're some crazy communist that's going to take away everybody's property. And I mean, those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don't have to worry about whether it neatly fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory -- you should just decide what works.
And I said this to President Castro in Cuba. I said, look, you've made great progress in educating young people. Every child in Cuba gets a basic education -- that's a huge improvement from where it was. Medical care -- the life expectancy of Cubans is equivalent to the United States, despite it being a very poor country, because they have access to health care. That's a huge achievement. They should be congratulated. But you drive around Havana and you say this economy is not working. It looks like it did in the 1950s. And so you have to be practical in asking yourself how can you achieve the goals of equality and inclusion, but also recognize that the market system produces a lot of wealth and goods and services. And it also gives individuals freedom because they have initiative.
And so you don't have to be rigid in saying it’s either this or that, you can say -- depending on the problem you're trying to solve, depending on the social issues that you're trying to address what works. And I think that what you’ll find is that the most successful societies, the most successful economies are ones that are rooted in a market-based system, but also recognize that a market does not work by itself. It has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis, and there has to be inclusion. Otherwise it’s not stable.
And it’s up to you -- whether you're in business or in academia or in the nonprofit sector, whatever you're doing -- to create new forms that are adapted to the new conditions that we live in today.
Obama somehow never learned that market-based capitalism with a Judeo-Christian moral and ethical framework is the system that best fits what he claims he would like to see.
It's absurd that we should believe any information coming out of Cuba, particularly easily manipulated and hardly comparable data like life expectancy. In the U.S., there are extraordinary efforts made to save the lives of premature babies who would never have been born in the first place in Cuba, where the abortion rate is a multiple of that seen in the U.S.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
