Right-wing media put Obama on the couch for inch-deep analysis

Right-wing media figures, including Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and The Washington Times' Wesley Pruden, have in recent days attacked President Obama while discussing his mental state. While claiming, “I'm not asking you to psychoanalyze the president,” Beck asked psychiatrist and Fox News contributor Keith Ablow, “Are we crazy for saying something is not right?”; Savage offered a psychological diagnosis of Obama, claiming that the president has “deep psychological problems” and “deep-seated inferiority feelings.”

Right-wing media figures discuss what's “wrong” with Obama, identify “deep psychological problems”

Beck and psychiatrist Ablow not psychoanalyzing the president -- just discussing what's “wrong” with him. On the November 11 edition of his Fox news program, Beck stated to Ablow: “I wrote to you, and I said, 'Do you see anything wrong here as a -- ' I'm not asking you to psychoanalyze the president. I'm saying, psychoanalyze the American people. Are we crazy for saying something is not right?” In his reply, Ablow stated: “We're not crazy for saying something's not right. It's a little crazy that more people aren't saying it more loudly.” Ablow later stated: "[T]here is a big, cavernous gulf, apparently, between the president's ability to generate emotion and charisma and gripping words that move people when he's scripted. And then, when there's less time to prepare, there's some sort of lack of connectedness, a true lack of connectedness with at least what moves the majority of us." In discussing Obama's statements about the Fort Hood shooting, which Beck claimed were “disconnected,” Ablow said: "[I]f he's not scripted to deliver the emotional cues, if he's not scripted to have lots of time and a teleprompter to do it, then he tends to stumble. And this was a huge stumble. This was a big, big window on the man's soul, I think." [Fox News' Glenn Beck, 11/11/09]

Savage's psychoanalysis: Obama has “deep psychological problems,” “deep-seated inferiority feelings.” While discussing Obama's bow to Japanese Emperor Akihito, Savage stated that “this man has deep psychological problems” and that “since we know he is only a man, and therefore since all men suffer from psychological problems, is it not logical to assume that he may have psychological problems? And if so, what are his psychological problems, and how do they affect this man's behavior and his overt contempt for America, its history, and its people and his love of everything third-world?” He later claimed that “you start to put a picture together of a guy who has such deep-seated inferiority feelings, it seems as though he's looking for his father all over the world.” [Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation, 11/17/09]

Pruden: “Obama's curious compulsion to travel the world to make endless apologies for America could stem from his spending the most formative years of his childhood in the Third World.” In a November 17 column, Pruden, The Washington Times' editor emeritus, wrote that Obama's bow to Emperor Akihito was “a sign of a really deep sense of inferiority.” In a November 20 column, Pruden wrote: “Barack Obama's curious compulsion to travel the world to make endless apologies for America could stem from his spending the most formative years of his childhood in the Third World.”