“Newtown, you are not alone”
President Obama delivers a stirring address at Newtown High School, not far from Sandy Hook Elementary VIDEO
By Jim Kuhnhenn, APTopics: Video, Associated Press, Sandy Hook Elementary, Sandy Hook Shootings, Newtown, Newtown High School, Connecticut, News
President Barack Obama greets Gov. Dannel Malloy during his arrival at the start of an interfaith vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. (Credit: AP/The Hartford Courant, Stephen Dunn, Pool)NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — A mournful President Barack Obama said Sunday that the nation is failing to keep its children safe, pledging that change must come after an elementary-school massacre left 20 children dead.
“What choice do we have?” Obama said. “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?”
In a vigil for the fallen, in a moment of grief that spread around the world, Obama conceded that none of his words would match the sorrow. But he declared to the community of Newtown: “You are not alone.”
For Obama, ending his fourth year in office, it was another sorrowful visit to another community in disbelief. It is the job of the president to be there, to listen and console, to offer help even when the only thing within his grasp is a hug.
The massacre of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday elicited horror around the world, soul-searching in the United States, fresh political debate about gun control and questions about the incomprehensible — what drove the suspect to act.
Privately, Obama told Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy that Friday was the most difficult day of his presidency.
Related Stories
-
Target ad campaign puts food in the spotlight
-
Report: Performance counts more than connections for women on Wall Street
-
Study: The non-monogamous are as happy as other couples
-
IMF economists apologize for austerity forecasts
-
Kansas militia prepares for zombies
-
Major charitable gifts dropped by 30 percent last year
-
Coming eventually: Print your own organs
-
Stocks head for big weekly gain after jobs report
-
Sorry, the Library of Congress isn't displaying your brilliant tweets
-
House approves $9.7 billion in Sandy aid
-
Poll: Obesity's a crisis but we want our junk food
-
Wal-Mart to bring questionable oversight to U.S. warehouses
-
6 lessons from Google's antitrust win
-
Amsterdam plans to house "antisocial" tenants in "scum villages"
-
Ann Coulter's astounding gun control diatribe
-
Facebook brag about drunk driving gets teen arrested
-
Excavators head to Myanmar to find WWII Spitfires
-
California court: Victim wasn't married, rape conviction reversed
-
Must-see morning clip
-
Hugo Chavez fighting severe lung infection
-
Court upholds right to give police the finger
Featured Slide Shows
What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show
close X- Share on Twitter
- Share on Facebook
- Thumbnails
- Fullscreen
- 1 of 10
- Previous
- Next
-
10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus
-
9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"
-
8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post
-
7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor
-
6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
-
4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon
-
3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.
-
2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon
-
1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle
-
Recent Slide Shows
-
What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show
-
Blue Glow TV Awards: Top 10 Shows of the Year
-
The Week in Pictures
-
The Week in Pictures
-
- Share on Twitter
- Share on Facebook
- Thumbnails
- Fullscreen
- 1 of 10
- Previous
- Next
-
The Week in Pictures
-
The Week in Pictures
-
Meet this season's 10 TV scene-stealers and scene-killers
-
The Week in Pictures
-
Great graphic novels from 2012
-
The Week in Pictures
-
Gladwell, Franco, Patti Smith: These books changed me
-
Was I right? Six new TV series reassessed
-
Salon's Sexiest Men of 2012
-
Cinema's 11 most memorable LGBT villains
-
The Week in Pictures
-
The Week in Pictures
-
Sandy, the day after
-
Transit in trauma
-
Sandy's shocking aftermath
-
The best storms in cinematic history
-
Chris Christie reports in casual-wear
-
Lou Reed's been terrible for years!
-
The Week in Pictures
-
Susan Isaacs loves a rogue: Here are her nine favorites
-
The Week in Pictures
Related Videos
More Related Stories
Most Read
From Around the Web
North Korea flashes some knee under Kim Jong Un (VIDEO)
Obama photo shows exact moment he learned of Sandy Hook shooting
Venezuela: National Assembly to meet, make decisions on Chávez inauguration
US troops arrive in Turkey to man NATO Patriot missiles
Wegelin, Switzerland’s oldest bank, to close due to tax evasion scandal
The week's best of the internet
The daily gossip: Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez break up again, and more
Congress finally passes scaled-back Hurricane Sandy aid bill
4 reasons the government won't mint a trillion-dollar coin to prevent a debt-ceiling crisis
Obama the master strategist: How conservatives see the fiscal-cliff deal


Comments
17 Comments