1. Absolutely nothing. Obama was in the area, chose to see an obvious attraction there, like anyone else, and gave no thought to how he would look or what this would be taken to symbolize.
2. In the grand scheme of things, any one man who happens to live and walk at any given time, amounts to very little. Even as we know not who those men were that built this enigmatic monument, time will ultimately erase the significance of Obama.
3. The President is alone, alone in the bleak and difficult landscape, alone and yet contemplative.
4. The President is wandering, lost, in an irrelevant and meaningless maze.
5. Obama is a towering stone monument for the ages.
6. Obama has finally found some friends he identifies with.
7. Obama is getting stoned.
8. He's looking for a golf ball.
9. Everyone will have some fun cracking some jokes about this or wondering what the hell? and that will be a good distraction from anything for which I can be held responsible.
10. Every President has one concrete thing with which he's forever associated — Nixon/Watergate, Clinton/blowjobs, Carter/angry rabbit — and Obama wants Stonehenge.
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Obama is dumb as a rock.
My guess is the number of Obama supporters who are more into New Age/paganism stuff than traditional beliefs is on the high side compared to past presidents of both parties. That might also include members of his staff and itinerary planners who figured this would be a better photo op for that crowd than, say, a shot of the president at Westminster Abby, which would put some of the same people on their usual tears about the evils of mainstream Western religion.
"You’d think I would know better," said Janet Raffle.
An epigram for our choice of president.
" but what were Obama and his people hoping the photos would be taken to mean?"
I don't like any of the 5 choices, so I'd say:
6. Like everything else Obama, this is meant to be a wick for people to draw up their own personal meaning. Those that want a President with magical/spiritual/deep personal/historical/gravitational/statesman-likeable qualities will read into the photos something that confirms their own truth. And then they will be disappointed.
It means this.
Not surprisingly, he being a narcissist and all, Obama has not yet gotten the memo that most of us long ago figured out for ourselves, namely "Nobody gives a fuck about pictures of other people's kids (we just pretend to), vacations (we are NOT happy for you and yours), your good luck ('ef you), Christmas letters (OMFG) instead of a card --- all that shit."
So stow it, captain. And get the fuck back to work.
On second thought, don't.
Bush/Failure
The actual, correct answer is #3. With #9 as the backup.
I know this henge is calendar, and temple, but its also a massive public work project. No one man, no tribal leader, no king, could manage all the logistics, feeding, organization, coordination etc, so it is a tangible result of what co-operation can do. I'm sure much was compelled labor. But without writing (apparently) and without algebra (supposedly) and without spreadsheets (obviously).
I've seen documentaries where they get a crowd of enthusiastic people and they re-enact how a stone may have been moved. But they never try to do it completely with the technology of that time. They use cell phones and cars to get everyone assembled etc. I'd like to see how this could be crowd-sourced completely by word of mouth and by messengers.
For once, I will give him a very slight benefit of the doubt (I know, that is no fun), and go with option 1.
Hey, it IS Stonehenge!
"I know this henge is calendar, and temple, but its also a massive public work project."
One we could never pull off today. Stonehenge is not shovel ready.
I was reminded of some of the photos of Hitler and Stalin being noble-in-solitude.
Ann Althouse said...
The actual, correct answer is #3. With #9 as the backup.
Another possibility -- he wants to put the "Obama is a Muslim" canard to rest once and for all by revealing that he is actually a Druid.
I immediately thought of Spinal Tap.
The six inch president.
Stonehenge is all that's left of a once great culture. I look at it and wonder what went wrong.
Then here comes Obama and I think, 'Oh.'
I thought the pictures would be more poetic and mysterious. They would inspire thoughts about the mills of history and how little we understand of its purposes and our part in it......Nope. They look like standard issue tourist shots. Next trip to Egypt, he should climb to the top of of one of the pyramids and greet the rising sun with outstretched arms. That's the effect he's looking for.
Whatever was intended, the golf one is most apt. He's playing. He gives no fuck what anyone thinks. The less likely it looks that he'll get his way the more he'll play.
The massive ego that thought a priesthood of Druids would control the solar system and sun by erection of enormously expensive useless monuments reminds Obama that the pagan gods also selected Obama to control the world's weather by erecting enormously expensive useless monuments.
Obama was wondering "Gee if only I could marshal the American people to do my useless bidding like this Stonehenge. I wonder how the leaders did that way back when?"
BBC WNT took pains to show the length of the presidential motorcade through the countryside to get to Stonehenge. They also made note that tourists cannot walk among the stones, but are kept quite a ways away behind fences, and for this photo event, shushed away from the camera angles, so as to give the impression of solitary contemplation.
Mr. D beat me to it.
Well, they'll stone you when you're tryin' to be so good
They'll stone you just like they said they would
They'll stone you when you're tryin' to go home
They'll stone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
I'll be charitable and go with #1, because I'd like to see Stonehenge, but that's only going to happen if I'm in the area.
Obama is thinking.....
"What was I thinking!! This has to be easier than a health care web site! I'll bet this never crashes."
Jim in St Louis is right. But to be fair he is not particularly perceptive. That's what Obama said in 2008. He was a blank canvas that the voters could fill with their own interpretation of his positions. Because while he has an ideology, it is abhorrent to about 80% of Americans.
Secuity Team: "Would you like your picture taken with the President?"
Me: "Sure! Just give me a minute to step over to my car to get my I'm With Stupid t-shirt."
But you always think of saying these things at any time except when you need to. Usually after it's too late.
Looking forward to the rest of the photo op series:
Obama crossing Abbey Road
Obama holding up the Eiffel Tower in his outstretched hand
Obama kissing the Sphinx
Obama propping up the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Erich, I'm thinking he should kiss the Blarney Stone.
The builders of Stonehenge were forgotten millenia before the Celts and the Druid religion arrived in Britain.
john said...
BBC WNT took pains to show the length of the presidential motorcade through the countryside to get to Stonehenge. They also made note that tourists cannot walk among the stones, but are kept quite a ways away behind fences, and for this photo event, shushed away from the camera angles, so as to give the impression of solitary contemplation.
Thanks. I thought people were no longer allowed to walk among the stones like that but wasn't sure if I was remembering correctly. And it seemed strangely empty for such a popular tourist site.
It doesn't mean anything anymore.
The world has taken note of precisely what obama is and what he can do.
And they are all taking action accordingly.
"No one knows who they were... Or... What they were doing."
There's an Islamist terrorist movement on the world stage that's in no danger of being crushed by this dwarf.
"You didn't build that!" --Obama, to the Druids
The first time I thought of is that Obama wanted to see the venue that inspired Spinal Tap.
Several others had the same thought as I did.
Original Mike stole my post!
I guess it was more original with him, because he was commenter #1.
The joke "(Insert Spinal Tap joke)" was made 18+ hours ago in The Washington Post.
In other words, it was already too late to make the joke back then.
Sanitised and stage managed photo shoots fascinate me, particularly when they wish to emphasize solitude. You always wonder how much is happening just out of frame. We know there were at least two different professional photographers there because of the different photo credits and they each managed to stay out of each other's frames. Remember Bill Clinton reflectivly walking a beach or military cemetery in Normandy when he just happens to encounter a small American flag at his feet?
With that in mind, I'm more fascinated by the stereotypically perfect young English family that appears out of nowhere in photos 4 and 5 than anything Obama does in this shoot.
BTW, I did notice the flock of Obama voters in the background of photo 5. Nice touch.
A lonely man in the ruins.
No guide needed because he already knows more about it than anyone else possibly could.
Actually, Obama's co-religionists want to destroy the Sphinx, the Pyramids, and if they get a chance, Stonehenge, because anything before the prophet is haram.
Just so you know.
Stonehenge is just standing there on Salisbury Plain, unprotected except for a fence around it to keep out the rest of us (except for Druids on certain days of the year), but Zero gets to walk there. Just like Michelle can get people to open Harrod's for her on a Sunday.
"Does this monument make me look small?"
"Come to think of it, Mr. President, it does."
Click over to the comments at Althouse's link. Hope and change is alive and well there. At least in the first dozen or so comments and their replies.
It would be a nice reminder that you are still the most powerful man in the world, to have Stonehenge shut down for your own private viewing (and touching!).
"The actual, correct answer is ..."
The many, different answers in this thread show that the question is more protean than even Derrida might have suggested. Obama remains mostly a vague and insubstantial presence about whom most people will find what they want to see.
He is thinking (complacently of course) that everyone knows his stones are bigger.
When the world is your stage.
"I think that the problem may have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object."
I'll bet President Obama had those rocks brought in just for the photo op
Some focus group guru from Harvard advised him to spend my tax dollars to fly AF1 out there. Would appeal to the nut cake fringe of his base. Obama had never heard of the place.
The "little people" aren't allowed to get that close or walk inside the henge. At least it was that way back in 1998.
He's looking to mobilize the Druid vote my husband says.
Pretty soon we'll have a picture of every major landmark with Obama deep in contemplation. These will be substituted in all educational books for anything absent his visage. The king must be involved in everything (or seen to be).
It's something that probably made a lot of sense in the past, but to be honest, it's really showing its age, and it's pretty much useless at this point.
Stonehenge, on the other hand, is awesome.
Don't be silly. Josh Ernest and the MSM will insist that Stonehenge actually visited Obama.
He's thinking "The English made it plain that they didn't want me to meet with anyone like the Queen because I've insulted and alienated them all. And I certainly didn't want to listen to David Cameron yammering about ISIL (the idiot calls it ISIS for some reason) and how it's a major threat and 9/11 is coming up and blah, blah. And I can't meet English Muslims - some scandal, something, ... I don't know what ...But this - totally irrelevant since 5000 BC. Perfect for me."
Pause.
"I wonder how they did it without styrofoam."
Styrofoam, like the faux Greek columns at his nominating ceremony.
He's a druid.
What if he did make an announcement that visiting Stonehenge deeply affected him and moved him to convert to druidism?
That would make that Sunday interview more interesting.
Then he could wear a cloak and hang out in the woods.
The whole thing could be sincere or a bit of big time surreal performance art.
Headlines
Leftist rag: "A President Who Loves the Earth"
Rightist rag: "Not Muslim, Pagan!"
If I were President, and that got me an up close viewing of Stonehenge, I would take it. It's right with the pyramids in terms of 'How did they do it?' and way ahead for 'Why did they do it?' I visited a similar site in France years ago - Carnac - and it's still one of the oddest and most remarkable things I've ever seen.
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