Romney was great at the Al Smith dinner. The link to the transcript and video is here.
His speech was one big amygdala hijack for Obama, full of Narcissistic dogwhistles. He begins with a joke about how he loves attending this type of white tie dinner, because he and Ann get to wear the clothes which they wear normally around the house. To a normal person, Romney was making a self deprecating joke about his being stuffy. To a Narcissist, in competition with him, Romney was highlighting that he an Ann are rich robber barons. These things hurt Narcissists, strangely enough. I can only understand this by hearing Romney say it, and then picturing how my own narcissist would deflate into a fetid pool of envy, as he heard it.
He points out several times that Obama’s ally Joe Biden is an idiot who is hurting Obama’s cause.
He points out that Obama and the Cardinal and the Church are all opposed to each other, while Romney and the Cardinal and the church all get along just fine. Out-grouping is painful to the Narcissist.
‘Obama is down to the end of his final term.’ Ouch.
Obama looks at the room and wants to redistribute everything owned by everyone he sees. This one hurts, because it is true. And again, Obama is the enemy of the group, Romney is the friend, and it is mean of Romney to say all of this publicly.
‘Obama’s down to arguing you may be better now than you were four weeks ago.’ Obama will hear this as him making pathetic arguments, from a position of weakness. It adds on.
The Apostle St. Peter said, “Upon this rock, I will build my church.” Guys like the enemy Obama said, “If you’ve got a church, you didn’t build that.” If a scan of your brain shows it actually processes social dynamics information instead of task oriented data, this is agony. It is the equivalent of a task oriented person spending years training for one Olympic shot, and blowing it.
“In the spirit of Sesame Street, the president’s remarks tonight are brought to you by the letter ‘O’ and the number $16 trillion.” Failure.
“President Obama and I are each very lucky to have one person who is always in our corner, someone who we can lean on, and someone who is a comforting presence, without whom we wouldn’t be able to go another day. I have my beautiful wife Ann, he has Bill Clinton.” First, Romney has a beautiful wife, Obama – not so much. And then there is the fact that Bill had just stabbed Obama in the back, here, with his own little Narcissistic dog whistle, so this highlights how Obama can’t even trust his own friends. He is wholly alone, without any in-group to support him.
Bill Clinton saying Obama looked like he was going to cry, is a direct attack on a child-like, Narcissistic psychology. He didn’t have to say it that way. He could have said Obama looked sad, Obama looked blankly, Obama looked unhappy, but it was said that way purposefully. Children cry when they can’t get what they want. Obama is a child who isn’t going to get what he wants, and he looks like he is going to cry. Note also, Bill Clinton would never have made this type of mistake on his own campaign.
Clinton is smart (and Narcissistic himself), and he knows, if Obama gets a second term, the press will hail him as a hero, and Obama will be the rock-star of the Democratic party. Obama will get the most expensive speaking gigs, his charitable foundation will dwarf Clinton’s, and the media will always run to Obama for an answer at every turn. If Clinton could be converted from a rapist, into a respected elder statesman, imagine what the press will do with Obama, America’s first two-term, Liberal, Black President. Clinton knows this, and this type of thing is just how the Liberal sticks the knife in, acts dumb, and calls it accidental.
On the subject of how Liberals will see Mitt’s comments differently, here are two comments from readers, at the linked article,
“Kell,” who sees the world through the Narcissist’s lens (and assumes everyone else thinks like her as well), wrote a reply saying:
“…I did read Mr. Romney’s speech’s transcript in full. He is so insulting and gross. I don’t think he has any idea how badly his words fall on the ears of everyday Americans…”
“Chris,” who obviously knows a Narcissist, said,
“Just like the narcissist in chief, the comments here reveal Obama and his supporters can neither take any criticism, [nor] perhaps even a joke.”
Other comments at other Liberal sites were similar to Kell’s. Romney was “dickish,” Romney produced feelings of revulsion, he was a “pompous boob,” he came off as a jerk, “he came off as petty and mean-spirited,” etc. You get the idea. One site particularly took offense at the Michele joke as tasteless, obnoxious, and so on.
Again, if your cognitive system is hyper-sensitive to criticism, due to your brain structure and function, even the most innocent of jokes, which everyone else sees as funny and harmless, will be misinterpreted as criticism, and the crowd’s laughter will be perceived as a direct attack upon your dignity. The most innocent moment can be deeply humiliating, and emotionally upsetting. That is the dog whistle only the Narcissist can hear.
The Al Smith Dinner couldn’t have come at a better time. Mitt gets to passively demean Obama, in front of a crowd, as the entire crowd looks at Obama and laughs. For a normal person, this would be good fun, but for a Narcissist, it must have been agony.
Now on to the next debate. God Speed Mitt
