The White Obama

The White Obama

Because I am one of the angriest of the angry Americans we keep hearing about, I can fully understand the enthusiasm of those who have fallen into line behind Donald Trump. After all, he appears to speak for many Republicans who are sick and tired of those politicians who have an ® after their name, but not a single conservative principle in their hearts.

I would love to join them, but I can’t for a number of reasons. For one thing, I don’t believe in personality cults. When I hear a candidate insist “I will do this and I will do that once elected,” I can close my eyes and hear Barack Obama saying the same thing. Although Obama has done his best to turn America into a banana republic, I expect conservatives to understand that the chair in the Oval Office is not a throne, and the executive branch is not the be-all and end-all of the government, but is merely one of the three branches.

Even Ronald Reagan, who was probably the most popular president of the past 70 years, worked closely with House Speaker Tip O'Neill (D, MA) to get his agenda through Congress, just as Bill Clinton did with Newt Gingrich (R, GA). Working with the opposition for the common good does not translate into selling out, except, of course, when the opposition is represented by a demagogue like Obama.

In the case of Trump, I see a bully who trashes all of his fellow contenders, stooping even to boorishly attack Carly Fiorina’s looks, and then inevitably defend himself like an eight-year-old by insisting that they all started it.

Trump makes promises he can’t possibly keep, which is bad enough, but he has thinner skin than a butterfly and managed to turn Megyn Kelly’s asking the GOP contenders whether they would all support the eventual nominee into a brawl even after he, himself, had floated the notion of running as a third party candidate.

The worst thing about Trump is that if we are to believe him today, he totally disagrees with the Donald Trump who, just a short time ago, donated to Planned Parenthood, was a Pro Choice advocate, supported gun control legislation, promoted a single-payer health care system and called Hillary Clinton a great Secretary of State.

Heck, it was just three years ago that a lot of people were upset with Mitt Romney because they viewed him as a flip-flopper simply because he had signed off on RomneyCare when he was the governor of Massachusetts.

Hell, if flip-flopping were an Olympic event, the Donald would be a gold medal winner.

Recently, one of my readers sent me photos of his male ancestors in their kilts. I was surprised because he doesn’t have a Scottish surname. When I wrote back asking about it, he explained that his father’s ancestry was English, but dad had died quite young, so he was mainly raised by his mother and her Scottish side of the family.

The reason I had asked is because I had a theory, but the unfortunate circumstances of his father’s death complicated things. You see, I believe that whenever a person has two very different backgrounds, he or she will likely play up the one that is less familiar and will provide them with what they regard as a more exotic identity.

It is most often seen with those who have one white and one black parent, people like Barack Obama and Halle Berry. Perhaps not in every case, but more often than not, they tend to identify with their black half.

In the case of Elizabeth Warren, she used her infinitesimal drop of Cherokee blood to further her academic career, knowing that being Indian would swing wide the doors of academia where racial diversity is the only diversity that matters. But I am guessing that even if she hadn’t been able to use it to her professional advantage, she would have bored everyone in her circle to death by endlessly bragging about her connection to Uncle Geronimo or her second cousin, twice removed, Sitting Bull.

There was once a writer-producer here in Hollywood who had been raised in a secular home and had been unaware until, in his late 30s, he attended an uncle’s funeral and discovered it was a Jewish ceremony.

Once he found out that he wasn’t a non-observant Protestant, he began telling people that he wasn’t really all that surprised to discover he was Jewish because it explained the innate sense of comedy he brought to his work.

A study of geniuses down through the ages has recently disclosed that their names are most likely to be John and Mary, followed by Robert and Elizabeth. I experienced a smidgen of regret not to see “Burt” included, but in these politically correct times when some people take offense at the littlest thing, I was happily surprised to see that Mohammad, Abdul and Moesha, also failed to make the list even when you got down as far as 50th place.

Whatever slim hope I might have for the future is dashed every time I see a restaurant filled with young people, all of them yakking on their cell phones or ignoring the people sitting with them in order to text absentees.

What on earth, I ask myself, could these youngsters possibly have to transmit at that very second that would compel them to behave so arrogantly? Somewhere, I’m convinced, civility lies in an unmarked grave, mourned, I suspect, only by those of us who will soon lie in graves of our own.

In a way, it reminds me of those presidents who wave off questions from White House reporters, excusing themselves by pointing to a waiting helicopter, pretending that it just might take off without them.

A favorite line of Shakespeare’s derives from “Henry VI,” and is widely quoted by those who have never read or seen the play. Delivered by a character named Dick the Butcher, the line is: “The first thing we do, let’s kill the lawyers.”

If it sounds pretty blood-thirsty even for Shakespeare, it’s because it’s been taken out of context. Dick only had corrupt and unethical lawyers in mind. After all, most lawyers deal with contracts, deeds, wills and other legitimate matters, and do so in an honest and straightforward manner.

As I see it, the line should only refer to those criminal defense attorneys whose lives are dedicated to using chicanery to acquit even those they know are guilty of the vilest acts, and to the legions of lawyers who give up the practice of law in order to take up the malpractice of politics.

Finally, I am as apt as the next guy to groan when someone makes a pun in my presence. I tend to believe it isn’t a mere coincidence that “pun” plays such a prominent role in words like “punish,” “punishing” and “punishment.” Still, there are times when a pun transcends the commonplace.

Recently, Steve Maikoski, who serves as my computer technician and sees to it that you all receive my commentary without a hitch, noticed an extraneous comma in one of my pieces as he was posting it. When he called it to my attention, I made the correction and let him know I couldn’t explain how it was I hadn’t noticed such an obvious error.

He wrote back to suggest that perhaps I had been commatose.

Burt Prelutsky
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- https://twitter.com/toptradesmen
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