-By Warner Todd Huston
Obama must not have been paying too much attention to what his folks at NATO have been doing as they prepare for the summit coming up on May 20, 21 in Chicago because the new video touting the gathering has a few whoppers included. Namely that Chicago is the capital of Illinois (it isn’t) and is “the city he grew up in” (he didn’t).
As the mellifluous tones of the European accented, female narrator begins, we see images of the shining City of Big Shoulders, The City That Works, the legendary Windy City, the, uh, Capital of Illinois? That’s what we are told…
On the 20th and 21st of May, Chicago is going to be at the center of attention. More than 60 heads of state in government will meet to discuss crucial matters of security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic Area. And so the leaders of the member nations of the organization created by the 1949 Washington Treaty will meet in the capital of Illinois this time.
There was a good reason for this choice. The decision was made by the American President Barack Obama, who wanted this event to take place in the city he grew up in.
Ooops.
Not only is Chicago not the capitql of Illinois, much as many Chicago politicians seem to act as if it were, the real capital is Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield. Additionally, neither Chicago nor Illinois is where Obama grew up. That was Indonesia and Hawaii.
But not to worry, says our kindly narrator. Facts don’t matter too much because “Chicago appeals to Americans just as much a Europeans.”
Well, that makes me feel better, anyway. And why not? With unemployment as high as it is, with parts of the city beginning to look like Dresden after the bombing, and with businesses fleeing both the city and the state… I can see why Europeans feel at home here.
How is it possible that something as large and important as NATO cannot even get simple facts correct? One has to wonder if incompetence has become such a hallmark of this presidency that it is now infecting everything it touches?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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