Much ridicule has already been heaped on Secretary of State John Kerry for having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” to the French last week, but we feel obliged to add a bit more. Not since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered that apologetic misspelled “reset” button to the rapacious Russkies has American foreign policy been so embarrassing.
It’s not just that Taylor’s folky schtick was sappy even when it was popular way back in the ’70s, or that “You’ve Got a Friend” was just about the sappiest of it, but that the gesture was intended as an apology for the United States’ even more embarrassing failure to send a high-ranking figure to France’s march on behalf of freedom of speech in the wake of a murderous attack by radical Islamist terrorists against a satirical magazine that had published cartoons critical of radical Islamism. While the heads of state of every other significant country felt obliged to make the trip, America was represented at the march by its ambassador the country, a former campaign bundler for the Obama presidential campaigns, despite the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder was conveniently in Paris at the time, Vice President Joe Biden’s schedule was of course open, and the security concerns that were cited to explain the president’s absence didn’t keep Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from a spot at the lead of the march. The international and domestic criticism was so withering that the White House spokesman acknowledged the mistake, and Kerry and his guitar-strumming buddy from Martha’s Vineyard were dispatched to make amends.
Compounding the embarrassment even further was the obvious insincerity of the performance. The same president that declared to the United Nations in the aftermath of a terror attack on an American consulate in Benghazi that was falsely blamed on an obscure YouTube video critical of Islamism that “The future must not belong to those who slander that prophet of Islam” was never to going to march on behalf of the right to freely express opinions regarding religion. As France musters some uncharacteristic courage to confront the Islamist threat it has unwisely welcomed, it will take more than a washed-up folk-rocker to convince them they have a friend in the United States for at least the next two years.
Even James Taylor and John Kerry aren’t as embarrassing as that sad fact.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 