A D-Day Veteran Politely Declines Obama Invitation By John Fund June 6, 2014 11:08 AM
Take George Ciampa, the most vibrant and spry 89-year-old I have ever met. In 1944, he landed in Normandy as a soldier assigned to the 84th Graves Registration Unit. “I spent the next few years going from France to Germany helping to bury people,” he told me. He was involved in setting up the temporary military cemeteries in Normandy that have now become stirring memorials to our fallen dead.
The experience transformed George, and he eventually became a filmmaker celebrating America’s heroes. His website tells the story of the four documentaries he has done on military valor. He is still making films today.
This week, George received a call from the White House, who said they knew he would be over in France during D-Day, and wondered if he would attend a private meeting the White House was arranging for veterans with President Obama.
George thought about it for awhile and concluded he just couldn’t. “I have so many issues with the president’s policies, including the most recent ones,” he told me ruefully. “I just couldn’t convince myself to do it.”
He is not alone. The recent Bergdahl prisoner swap in which five hardened Taliban terrorists were released from prison is rubbing a lot of the military veterans attending D-Day events the wrong way. “It’s not that we don’t want to respect the commander-in-chief,” one told me sadly. “It’s just that he makes it so hard to do so."
The only reason I can imagine a D-Day veteran would not want to meet with the President is because the veteran is a racist. Or, possibly the veteran is a republican operative and wants to see Obama fail. Those are the only two reasons anybody would decline a meeting with President Obama.
The only reason I can imagine a D-Day veteran would not want to meet with the President is because the veteran is a racist. Or, possibly the veteran is a republican operative and wants to see Obama fail. Those are the only two reasons anybody would decline a meeting with President Obama.
You are really an A$$HOLE....playing the stupidity role for what purpose! What this Veteran did is express his views, as many of us do, in a way we feel comfortable with. They don't sit behind a computer and whine in cyberspace all day and do nothing else. His message was clear and done in an effective and class way....not like WAH WAH !!!
JUST BECAUSE SISSY SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO...BUT HE THINKS IT DOES!!!!! JUST BECAUSE MC1 SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO!!!!!
You are really an A$$HOLE....playing the stupidity role for what purpose! What this Veteran did is express his views, as many of us do, in a way we feel comfortable with. They don't sit behind a computer and whine in cyberspace all day and do nothing else. His message was clear and done in an effective and class way....not like WAH WAH !!!
Well, after 5 years of all critics of Obama policy being considered racist, I just figured this guy is another in a long line of Obama racist critics. Box a Rox has hammered this point home for years, I don't know why this critic of Obama is any different than the rest of the racists.
The only reason I can imagine a D-Day veteran would not want to meet with the President is because the veteran is a racist. Or, possibly the veteran is a republican Tea Party operative and wants to see Obama fail. Those are the only two reasons anybody would decline a meeting with President Obama.
Fixed.
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
Oh yeah...The tea party that isn't a political party. I forgot about those pesky tea party racists. They just stand out there and rally against black people - it is their only motivation. The Southern Poverty Law Center said the Tea Party(that isn't a party) wants to bring slavery back to the south.
The only reason I can imagine a D-Day veteran would not want to meet with the President is because the veteran is a racist. Or, possibly the veteran is a republican operative and wants to see Obama fail. Those are the only two reasons anybody would decline a meeting with President Obama.
Must be one of those racist tea bagging white Christian gun hugging right wing domestic sovereign citizen terrorist box always warns us about, good thing this 89 year old didn't get within 10ft of the messiah, the SS almost dropped the ball on this one.
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
From NASCAR Drivers to William Faulkner: A Brief History of Snubbing the President September 7, 2011
Four out of twelve NASCAR drivers who were invited to meet President Obama at the White House this evening have declined to attend, citing scheduling conflicts—and sparking a nationwide gossip-fest. Refusing an invitation to visit the most powerful man in the world at his giant white mansion in the middle of the nation’s capital is, after all, not the same thing as, you know, missing your second cousin’s garden party. Saying “no” to the President is widely considered a major snub, a political rebuff and, depending on who you are, an insult of international proportions.
The thing is, it’s happened way more often than you’d think.
IT'S A POLITICAL PROTEST
Some honored invitees, like Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell, have refused to visit the White House as a gesture of political protest. In Lowell’s case, he wrote a letter to then-President Lyndon Johnson explaining that he deeply disagreed with the president’s Cold War foreign policy: “We are in danger of imperceptibly becoming an explosive and suddenly chauvinistic nation, and we may even be drifting on our way to the last nuclear ruin,” he wrote.
Winners of the National Design Awards—the Oscars of the design world—pulled a similar stunt in 2006, refusing an invitation to attend an awards breakfast at the White House on the grounds that “the administration of George W. Bush has used the mass communications of words and images in ways that have seriously harmed the political discourse in America,” according to a public letter.
IT'S JUST TOO FAR
Other illustrious would-be guests have refused to visit the president’s home for somewhat hazier reasons. Take for example Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner, who refused a dinner invitation at the Kennedy White House saying, “Why that’s a hundred miles away,” according to an interview in LIFE magazine. “That’s a long way to go just to eat.”
Decades earlier, President Calvin Coolidge’s father refused a direct invitation to come to the White House, but not for any scandalous reason. In 1923, after the premature death of President Warren Harding, the elder Coolridge swore-in President Coolidge at his Vermont farmhouse, and then sent his son packing to D.C. When the president asked his father to come with him, he refused: “There’ll be a funeral down there,” he said, according to the New York Times. “I think that my place is here to take care of the farm.”
Hollywood luminary Angelia Jolie and operatic reality TV star Susan Boyle both reportedly refused invitations to Obama’s White House this year for unspecified reasons. According to gossip rags, Jolie was saving herself for “more important” things, while Boyle was “too nervous” to meet the president.
IT'S JUST POLITICS
The most popular reason for snubbing a White House invitation is, of course, a matter of straight politics. In 1982, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s son—no friend of Reagan’s policies—refused to attend a White House function in honor of his father, saying he was “tied up” all day.
A few years later, Senator Jesse Helms also snubbed Reagan’s White House, saying he didn’t want to attend a dinner that would require him to “socialize” with Mikhail Gorbachev.
More recently, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has set the modern bar for White House snubs. In the last year, Boehner has refused to attend three different functions at Obama’s pad, including a bipartisan service for Representative Gabrielle Giffords and a fancy state dinner for Chinese president Hu Jintao. But perhaps that’s nothing compared to former-President Herbert Hoover's no-show at President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration. According to news reports, Hoover’s plane circled D.C. a few times and then gave up, citing weather issues, and flew to Miami instead. The former president whipped off a note to Kennedy—“I made a hard try to attend your inauguration”—and then winged off on an impromptu fishing vacation in the Florida Keys.
If Kennedy was insulted by Hoover’s snub, he could have looked for advice to Abraham Lincoln, who was an expert in the matter. A hundred years earlier, during the Civil War, Union General George McClellan didn’t exactly refuse to attend a White House function (Lincoln didn’t live at the White House for much of the Civil War), but did one worse: he refused to meet the President himself, who had been waiting in the general’s parlor for more than an hour. According to the story, McClellan got home, went directly upstairs without greeting Lincoln, and told his servant to tell the President of the United States he’d gone to bed. Lincoln, who McClellan later called a “well-meaning baboon,” shrugged off the insult, saying “better at this time not to be making points of etiquette and personal dignity.”
IT'S GOTTEN UGLY
As for those NASCAR drivers, their choice to decline a White House function tonight in their honor has precedent. Well, kind of. Nearly two decades ago, a group of golfers representing the U.S. in the international Ryder Cup threatened to boycott an event in their honor at Clinton’s White House. The media, which got itself into a tizzy over the threatened snub, quoted the golfers saying all manner of nasty things about the Democratic agenda, including one celebrated player in particular who reportedly called the president a “draft-dodging baby-killer.”
Unlike the NASCAR drivers, all the golfers eventually agreed to show up at the White House, at which point everyone smiled, sipped drinks and talked about anything but politics.
George Amedore & Christian Klueg for NYS Senate 2016 Pete Vroman for State Assembly 2016[/size][/color]
"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground." Lyndon Baines Johnson
Yeah, but those examples were white people snubbing a white president. That is likely political. But this is different. This is a white veteran snubbing Obama. It can only be racist motives. If you oppose Obama, it's because your racist subconscious can't stand to see a black man as president. I think box posted an article explaining this phenomenon. So it's been scientifically proven.
Yeah, but those examples were white people snubbing a white president. That is likely political. But this is different. This is a white veteran snubbing Obama. It can only be racist motives. If you oppose Obama, it's because your racist subconscious can't stand to see a black man as president. I think box posted an article explaining this phenomenon. So it's been scientifically proven.
Box is an a**. So I don't worry about what he thinks.
Quite frankly, Obama needs to heed the sage advise of one of his predecessors, Harry Truman, -- "If you can't stand the head then get the hell out of the kitchen." Furthermore, it is blatantly racist to expect that just because the president is half African-American that means we can't criticize him and his policies. Is the Left somehow suggesting that Obama can't handle criticism because of the color of his skin? Speaking only for myself, I follow the words of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. -- "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Obama is being judged by his character and the decisions he has made while president -- NOT by the color of his skin.
George Amedore & Christian Klueg for NYS Senate 2016 Pete Vroman for State Assembly 2016[/size][/color]
"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground." Lyndon Baines Johnson
LMAO! NASCAR DRIVERS??? DVOR'S POLITICS ARE CENTERED ON NASCAR DRIVERS!!!
OMG! FUNNY!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
LMAO! NASCAR DRIVERS??? DVOR'S POLITICS ARE CENTERED ON NASCAR DRIVERS!!!
OMG! FUNNY!
NASCAR drivers were only ONE example of people who have refused an invitation to the meet with the President at the White House. There were a number of examples from ALL different walks of life and from different eras in American history --- and, involving BOTH Democratic and Republican presidents.
George Amedore & Christian Klueg for NYS Senate 2016 Pete Vroman for State Assembly 2016[/size][/color]
"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground." Lyndon Baines Johnson
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