I've been following the flap about Obama's claim that his uncle spent six months in an attic after liberating Auschwitz. I'm grateful that I usually wait a bit to react to such stories. It's always good to leave the door open to a more innocent explanation.

Canny conservative bloggers quickly pointed out that Auschwitz was in Poland, and thus was liberated by the Red Army. Haha! So was Obama's Uncle in the Red Army?

As with Obama's mistaken statement about Kentucky being adjacent to Arkansas (which is funny, given that he lives right next door in Illinois!) this does point to some serious deficits with Obama's knowledge of geography (and history). (Too bad many of us have the same deficit!) But of course, when a candidate speaks, it's a bit different than you or I -- the speech had the chance to be vetted and examined by an entire staff of alleged experts. Nonetheless, sometimes those "experts" don't notice things, or sometimes the candidate offers off-the-cuff remarks which end up getting them into trouble. (John Kerry was rather famous for his inability to stick to the script -- and his staffers' frustration at the result.)

Dispelling any illusion of even-handedness, the media is being reliably partisan by burying the gaffe and now attacking the attackers. When Dan Quayle unquestioningly read the wrong spelling of "potato" from an answer sheet, he was lampooned for years. But the Obama gaffes have made few ripples outside the blogosphere. The LA Times retorts:

What's worse, Obama's apparent gaffe or the RNC pouncing on a Holocaust-related historical mistake for political advantage?

The lack of self-awareness here is mind-boggling. Why was Obama talking about his uncle in the first place? He was implying that if we'd had more socialized medicine back then, his uncle wouldn't have been holed up in his attic, suffering mental anguish:

“Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” Obama said. “That’s why this idea of making sure that every single veteran, when they are discharged, are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need – that’s why it’s so important.”

Yet we had plenty of facilities for wounded soldiers during World War II. The problem was that we didn't yet have a good understanding of how to identify and treat mental wounds, not just the more obvious physical ones. It wasn't a lack of facilities so much as a lack of knowledge.

Nonetheless, the point here was that Obama was referencing Auschwitz and the Holocaust in an attempt to gain political capital. Unless the author is a conservative, there's nothing wrong with that -- politicians do it all the time. But what's funny is the suggestion that it's okay to exploit the memory of the liberation of Auschwitz for one kind of political advantage, but utterly wrong to point out a mistake in that argument for another.

Yet in so doing, this LA Times writer is echoing a often-used left-leaning narrative: It is good for us to speak, but it is morally wrong for you to respond. When we speak, it is noble and appropriate. When you respond, it is low, political, and for a cynically calculated advantage.

It's not the implied hypocrisy that bothers me -- nor the clear double standard -- so much as the utter lack of self-awareness on display. The author cannot see that his own words are motivated by politics, and cannot see that Obama was similarly motivated. Only the right does things for political gain!

There is nothing scarier than a person (or movement) which displays no understanding of their own motivations or actions. That kind of self-blindness is characteristic of movements which have led to big, big problems.