"I see Barack Obama as -- first of all, the smile alone is going to restore this nation to the world's family of nations . . . "

—Phil Donahue

Enough said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Dem., NV) will open hearings next week to investigate what Reid called “A brazen unprovoked attack” by the Scottish terrier on Reuters reporter Jon Deker Nov. 6. According to Reid, Barney launched the bite based on falsified evidence of WMD, when clearly “no feline weapons of mass destruction were present anywhere in the vicinity of the attack.” Moreover, Reid argued in an interview with ABC News, the terrier has shown a pattern of biting without Congressional approval. Congressional sources report that the hearings could continue until Barney leaves office.

Hearings will be held even as vetting of potential replacements for Barney continues against the backdrop of rampant speculation about the puppy’s breed and pedigree. Former French President Jac Chirac, whose relationship with Barney was tense at best during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, remarked that the international community will not miss “the cowboy terrier.” “The Obama puppy will no doubt be one the world can trust, one we can play with freely. We never could make Barney fetch for us.”

Senator John Murtha (Dem., PA), who will co-chair the hearings with Reid, echoed world opinion in saying, “He has been sniffing around for 5 years, and still hasn’t found Bin Laden. All he does is bite innocent civilians and pee on their villages.”

In related news, Reid will begin proceedings to censure Sen. Joe Lieberman (Dem., CT) for remarks suggesting that Scotties have a right to self-defense if reporters lurch at them unexpectedly.

America is now Obama Girl. And like a new bride, when Mr. Right has promised you Hope and Change, you don’t want to hear a naggy friend or sister try to warn you about his drinking, cheating, or gambling in the middle of your honeymoon.  If you're mixing it up with new Brides of Obama still wearing his portrait on their shirts or still with the “Hope/Change” pin on their lapels, dare them to interrupt the Rapture just for a moment to ask themselves a few questions.  The election was after all less about him than it is about us.

Playing with the Race Card

First, something all but the Aryan Brotherhood can agree on: the moment is historic in a good way, beyond what we can possibly understand right now. About our ability to succeed regardless of race, it says something infinitely positive. How ironic that some expressions of support for Obama said the opposite.

Back during primary season, I thought, “There’s much to like here.” By the end of campaign season when it was down to Him and Him, I confess: the choice was difficult. As my pen hovered over the oval on the ballot (that’s how we do it in my precinct), I couldn't do it. I know people who would be suspicious right now. Did I resist because the circle would become black? Because the man is black? On the campus where I work, a number of people who don’t know me from Adam and know Obama only from TV would jump in right now and tell me “Yep, sister, that must be your problem.” Obama can only be questioned or doubted if the Doubter is stupid or racist.

Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. I wondered, why do some of his supporters think Obama needs the shelter of racial accusation to protect him? Why trivialize and muddify the entire concept of racism? Obama himself raised the shield in a more jovial style of pre-emptive victimization (“they” will mention my funny name/I don’t look like the other guys on the money). Meanwhile, hardly an Obama joke could be found anywhere on late-night talk, and save a few GOP pranksters who over-emphasized the “Hussein,” most of America went cold turkey on the irreverence binge that cuts everyone else running for office right down to size. A few comics are now pretending they WISHED Obama were good for a few laughs, but there's just no material; we now have perfection. They're now having a fire sale on the old Bush is an Idiot/McCain is Old schtick, and I'm guessing it will be like the sleazy furniture store down the block: it's not gonna close anytime soon.

Mr. Right, or Mr. Perfect?

If Obama makes mockable decisions in office, will we stay on a no-criticism fast to protect ourselves from the “racist” label? Are we so desperate for something other than the cartoon presidents we helped create that we’re ready to saint the new one based mostly on the one word that sold the campaign? (change; CHANGE!!!).

How about if we apply equal opportunity to our irreverence: let it rip when it’s earned—even when it’s one of our ideological or racial own—and shut the hell up when it’s not. If we can only see the myopia and incompetence, greed and self-aggrandizement, or plain silliness in the “Other” and not in our own, there, my friends, is Step Number One in setting ourselves up for massive disappointment in the shiny new version of Hope and Change.

On Media Cycles and Gettin’ Mavericky

Sure I’ve addressed you as “my friends” and questioned Barack (we know him so well, we can use his first name). McCain must've been my man. As we all know, if that’s so, then I voted for Bush. Heck, then I AM Bush. Here’s what needs to be said about McCain.

When he ran against Bush and when he opposed him on policy after, he was a media favorite. When I say “The Media,” think broken-record style of reporting that repeats essentially the same script on the nightly news whatever network channel you happen to be on. And CNN. And Keith Olbermann, though the script gets wackier there. Thus the “conventional wisdom” churns out day to day (that’s why, leftish lovers of free speech, we wonder why the very existence of Fox News and talk radio puts you all in a heap).

The Media dubbed McCain a Maverick long before it became his 2008 campaign slogan and long before Tina Fey put on Sarah Palin’s glasses and went all “mavericky.” Liberals named McCain the guy they could live with, the thoughtful anti-Bush. This year, the DNC, aided by the conventional wisdom-makers, ingeniously convinced us that McCain is Bush’s Siamese twin somehow walking around on his own two legs but still sharing the same retarded (yet somehow megalomaniacal and diabolical) brain.

Processed in the same cycle, Britney Spears is crazy trailer trash and unfit mom one day, a genius music maker making a bold statement for women’s rights with her oiled-up naked skin the next. What will the cycle do to Obama? Depends on how soon we get bored, how fast we get impatient with his Salvation Delivery time, how lax we are in paying attention to what matters and asking the right questions, how much we shut out all information except what we think we already know for sure.

Hypocrisy Gone Wild

So we were told, a vote for Obama is a vote against the politics of hate and an act of love for the middle and lower classes. Some Barack-ophiles expressed the idea through Palin hate mail, death threats, and festive Halloween displays, like Palin swinging from a noose. Funny how with Palin on the ropes, it’s art and free expression, but with someone else it would have been a hate crime. Is laughing off the former a good antidote for genuine examples of the latter? Hm.

Before she had opened her mouth to give us some policy ideas and aptitudes to evaluate, others went after her family (she, after all, created a wanton teenager and a Down Syndrome kid she allowed to live). Some suggested that she should—well—stay home and raise them. This year, we learned that feminism is only for a few.

Pre-Palin, Alaska was sacred ground, the place we dare not ravage with our hefty oil-mining industrial footprint, because of the pristine, priceless land and the endangered caribou we hold so dear. Post-Palin, Alaska was a podunk state of a couple of hundred losers and some worthless caribou, governance over which hardly counts as relevant experience for national leadership.

Palin failed the Katie Couric test, 2008’s version of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Measurement, and ever since has worn the scarlet I for Idiot. Joe Biden, the 24-hour ATM of embarrassing gaffes, got a pass. Funny how fate made Biden the VP of the “clean and articulate” black man he was running against so long ago (well, actually not that long . . .). Funny also how a Senate Lifer and a Senate Ingenue, who hadn’t yet done anything to rock the Washington boat, are this year’s Washington Outsider Breaths of Fresh Air. Palin doesn’t get how Washington works, and doesn’t particularly like it. Conventional Wisdom Translation: she is the 5th Beverly Hillbilly, slightly less educated than Jethro Bodine.


Then came Joe the Plumber. He questioned Obama. Not threatened. Not protested against. Before Joe cashed in on his 15 minutes, before he said boo about supporting McCain, he asked a question. Obama’s answer initiated discussion about his policy and the implications of “redistribution of wealth.” Not his race, not his personality, his policy. Joe the Plumber’s reputation was promptly picked clean—his license to plumb; his tax records; did he REALLY know a pipe wrench from a water key?


With reporters and common Joes who questioned, the Obama campaign sometimes behaved like Richard Nixon, though not so much as some of the Believers. When I hesitated over the oval, I thought of the symptoms that Obama has thin skin and his supporters will push him toward fascism, not his skin color. Tell your liberal friends not to get their panties in a big twist when the word “fascism” is used to describe their methods. Just say, "You know you think it’s ok to be a hater, as long as you’re hatin’ on the right people."

Political Influences & Character Issues: Bill Ayers vs. Spongebob Squarepants

For a time, it was every reporter’s dream to get George Bush to fess up to wrongdoing, to SOMETHING he had done and regretted. (Finally, post election, he's aplogizing for everything but being born). For years they stewed over what he reads, IF he can read. And then Palin failed to cough up an acceptable reading list AND a roster of Supreme Court cases. You just know the assumption is that both their answers to “Who do you read/who has influenced you the most” would be Jesus and Spongebob, not necessarily in order of importance.


Questioning Obama’s association with Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, et al. was fair game. Ask why probing the extent of the INFLUENCE of these men, as well as Karl Marx or Spongebob, in shaping Obama’s political philosophy and the policies that will govern us all should be off limits. During the election, the question was perceived as nothing more than gratuitous “going negative.” Obama: “Reverend Wright controversial? Huh—I missed that.” “Gee, I was only 8 when Bill did his bombing.” Uh huh—but you were a full-grown community organizer when you were shaping your political career and your policy ideas and floating around in some of the same circles as these guys. I want to believe that Obama will be a strait-talking leader. The hem/hawing about his associates was troubling, and not because I envisioned Obama and Ayers mixing explosives together in the White House basement. Why not simply tell us what ideas you have in common and which you repudiate?


All politicians break promises. When they’re in office, they sometimes have no choice. Their promises collide with the ones some other batch of politicians made to their salivating constituents. Does it bother the “Get the money out of politics!!!!!” voters that Obama broke his promise and drove over campaign finance reform, and public financing, in order to get to the Big Bazaar to sell pieces of himself to anybody who could fork over the dough? (and some gigantic batches of it!) Yet, “All for the rich” McCain stuck to the law he helped pass, stuck with public financing, and ended up hawking QVC-type goods on Saturday Night Live. “Republican Without Money” was by then not so much a joke. Obama may be no worse than most; but does he deserve to be haloed as Holier than the Rest? Not this year.

Over the Rainbow to the New Dawn: Change, Change, Change

O and B promise equality for all—but neither one supports gay marriage. Biden/Palin on that issue, in their debate, may as well have been playing for the same team—but Palin is the “homophobe.”


O and B are currently scanning a long list of old Clinton people for the new White House of Change. They want to bring back some bad OLD ideas that didn’t work when Europe tried them and new ideas whose consequences nobody cared to question too much. Anybody crying a tear for the coal miners who thought Obama would save their dying industry? Barack “I’m for clean coal” Obama made a tape that hardly made a blip in the news (see the San Francisco Chronicle), the one where he talked of his fresh new Cap and Trade Policy that will be the most punitive in the world, and how people can build coal-powered plants if they want to—they’ll just go bankrupt if they try. The Brides of Obama thinking “I don’t burn or dig coal, no big wup,” may want to riddle us this: do their hearts sing when Obama talks about how energy costs will “necessarily skyrocket” under his plan? That one scares the living Jesus out of me; some of us are still paying last year’s heating bills.


Oh wait, I’m “the wealthy.” I must be, because I have an “investment.” It’s an old house we’ve been trying to restore for 13 years. Obama never came around like Jimmy Carter to pound some nails or sand a few boards. Yet, when it’s sold, Obama says we have to give him a bigger chunk of our “capital gain.” We’re scraping mortgage payments together on a credit card, and if all expenses were tallied and time investment considered, we would come out great if Obama sent us a check for 20% of our LOSS. In Obama’s utopia, perhaps the “wealth” can be redistributed to the guy next door who sits in his back yard drinking beer and letting his house rot while making cracks about all that unnecessary work we’re doing.

When you hear politicians talk about “The Wealthy,” do you picture Thurston Howell III? Donald Trump? It’s a trigger designed to make all of us think of somebody NOT US getting fat and happy off the sweat of our brows. If our leftish friends can’t empathize with business owners who are not Exxon but help make the economy go, as they wonder if they will be able to keep their businesses under the vague economic plans proposed by everybody, then remind them that they ain’t gonna be a helpful part of “The Change.” If they start talking about the sacrifices we have to make to shrink our carbon footprints, just get out the duct tape.

Obama has had perfect 20/20 hindsight in replaying the wrongs of going to Iraq. But other than bringing the troops home ASAP, he (nor anyone else opposed to the war) has not had much to say about what happens next. Should the plan not involve some reasonable regard for the Iraqi people and the political course of the region, not just bringing home the soldiers and more wealth for redistribution?

Is being more popular with Europe the best GPS for our leaders to use as they navigate complex international threats? Some think so as we skip blissfully into the new era of World bilateralism and popularity. My momma always said it’s better to do right than be cool. We seem to be about to usher in the era of Be Cool, Not Lonely. I hope that President Obama has more wisdom than this, enough to know that there are circumstances when it’s better to be lonely than cool.


The End (and the Beginning)

Obama voters should be issued a quiz: when did recorded history begin? It's not with the Bush years. Nor were the banking crisis, the energy crisis, or any of our other problems forged by Bush alone. When various reporters grilled McCain and Palin, when the candidates debated, What will you do, they wanted to know, that will be different from George Bush?? Change is also gonna be pretty disappointing if the only standard is difference from Bush.

Somebody’s approval rating is lower than his: Congress. They played their part. We played a part. If Obama does his part to mess up the economy, foreign policy, or something else, will it still be Bush’s fault? For how long? Scapegoating all our troubles—or our salvation—onto the back of any one man or woman has never been a good idea before, and never will be. You can’t transform a system by changing only part of what created it and ignoring the rest.

With his personal charisma and eloquence, and his arrival at this particular historical time, it may be that Obama will prove to be a positive force that transcends policy. My point is that hope is good when tempered by common sense. Common sense includes not thinking about our leaders as caricatures with blazing halos or glowing devil horns. Full-swing campaign season brings out the worst in all politicians. I hope that the “real” Obama we barely know yet will earn even some of the unconditional faith so many have already placed in him.

And now, back to the Rapture.