So I just checked my school email and saw that the President Obama's visit to USM has been canceled. This was somewhat surprising because I hadn't knowing President Obama had planned to visit USM.
Turns out it goes like this:
At 12:31 I was walking home and thus not checking my email. If I had checked my email I would have seen that President Obama's visit to USM had been announced.
At 4:33 PM I was at my home but also not checking my email at just that moment. That's when the announcement came down that:
1) The visit was cancelled.
2) The person tasked with breaking the news hadn't been given any information as to say, why, or anything beyond, "Tell everyone it was canceled."
That's 4 hours and two minutes for the Obama camp to go from, "We're coming to your university, tell everyone," to, "Just kidding. Tell them we weren't serious."
Or to make it absurdly more personal than it has any right to be, this the second time Obama has stood me up.
Well, the reason for the cancellation is the school shooting in Connecticut. Best laid plans gang aft a-gley...
ReplyDeleteIf that's true (my computer is fucky at the moment so double checking isn't really possible) then it's another example of them refusing to communicate basic facts.
ReplyDeleteIf the Obama people had said, "The President can't make it because he's going to be spending the rest of the week concentrating on the tragedy in Connecticut," then it would be much easier to nod along and say it's alright than what they actually said which is (paraphrased) "The President won't be doing what we promised you he'd be doing and we're not going to tell you why."
It's like the last time, if they'd just said, "Sorry, we gave out too many tickets and building is full, you won't get in," that would have gotten a lot of people a lot less pissed off than their actual strategy of leaving the people waiting in line and pretending like they might actually get in when actually the doors had been locked and the President's speech was well underway. (There had been several long periods of the line not moving forward before, and when it stopped for the last time there was no indication that it was the last time, everyone assumed it would start up again.)
Doing something for a completely reasonable reason, but refusing to tell anyone what that reason is until after the fact, just leaves you looking like a jerk.