ACTORS AND POLITICIANS

We love the King’s English and are unabashed fans of those who have mastered it. We agree with the theater critic who once remarked that he could listen to Sir Richard Burton read a grocery list. We are therefore forced to comment on the mystical status that has been conferred upon the speech of Barack Obama. Having been raised in the center of the Bible Belt we recognize the rhythm and intonation of the Baptist Preacher in President Elect Obama’s rhetoric. He has the sing-song, repetitive form that is the hallmark of that oratorical tradition. It is clear that he has been influenced by the late Martin Luther King Jr. and his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. However, King and Wright were raised with the legacy of soaring speech and it became an integral part of them. For Obama, it is an acquired talent which he puts on as an actor dons a costume for a play.

We just watched Obama’s first of many Presidential press conferences and we were struck by the contrast in his rhetoric between his prepared remarks and his extemporaneous answers to the press’ questions. While delivering the prepared remarks he appeared cooler than the last four iterations of James Bond (No one can approach the benchmark coolness of Sean Connery’s Bond). However, he quickly dissolved into a verbal flop sweat while taking questions. He punctuating every third word with an “um” or “uh” while blinking like a drunk staring into a traffic cop’s flashlight. Contrast this with the performance handed us by Rev. Wright at the National Press Club breakfast. Offensive as it was, it was genuine and powerful. What we take from this is Barack Obama is an actor. His public appearances during the campaign have been performances, well written, well rehearsed, well directed, well produced, theatrical events.

The question is who is Barack Obama really? We always thought it remarkable that African Americans identified so closely with Obama. Apart from his genetics, he shares none of the common experience of Black Americans. He was raised in a white, upper middle class home. He attended the a prestigious white prep school in Hawaii. He started college at an elite private liberal arts school and completed his studies at two Ivy league institutions capped by graduation from the Nation’s most exclusive old boys’club, Harvard Law School. In fairness, he has taken great pains to join the African American community since graduation. Through his work as a community organizer and association with Trinity United Church of Christ he has immersed himself in the African American experience, albeit from a comfortable upper middle class distance.

As much as we believe we have not been introduced to the real Barack Obama as of yet, we are equally certain that his true persona shall not remain hidden for long. There are few more scrutinized homes than the White House and few confidants more willing to leak items to the Press than Rahm Emanuel , the man Obama has chosen as his White House Chief of Staff. In the end Obama’s legendary cool will be stripped from him. After all, we understand that Sean Connery really isn't very nice in person.

RATS AND REPORTERS

One of our favorite themes is the paucity of journalism integrity in the US today. Perhaps it is our age which allows us to remember Murrow, Brinkley, and Cronkite. Perhaps it is an archaic college class in journalism ethics. Perhaps it is just an old fashioned sense of decency. Whatever the antecedents, we are horrified and saddened by the media’s reporting of the sleazy stories coming out of the McCain campaign corpse.

Chief among these reports was Carl Cameron’s piece on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor yesterday evening. Citing anonymous sources, Cameron reported that the McCain organization was doomed by Sarah Palin’s inadequacy as a running mate. Without the hygiene of rubber gloves or disinfectant, he offered up stories of a Palin who did not know Africa was a continent, that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was an agreement between the North American countries of the US, Canada, and Mexico, or the most rudimentary facts about US government. He even threw in the salacious tidbit of Palin greeting McCain staffers fresh out of the shower, wearing only a bathrobe.



Now we have a problem with this report on a couple of levels.

• The only defense for slander is the truth. Absent named sources, this report cannot rise above the primordial slime of vicious rumor.
• It is incredulous that a sitting US governor could not name the countries in North America, identify the three branches of the federal government, or know the diffefrence between a continent and a country.
• The bathrobe item makes us cringe at the inappropriate intimacy.

The real story here is the rodent-like behavior of the McCain staffers. In a frenzy to save careers from drowning in a boiling sea of ineptitude, they are clammering over the body of the one person that gave the McCain campaign a shot at the Presidency. Palin’s nomination was the only point in the campaign that the media lights were turned away from Barack Obama and focused on McCain. Had McCain selected any other running mate, he would have lost by three times the margin. Post election finger pointing is inevitable, but the press’ role is analysis, not gossip. Now, we need a shower.

WE HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT

We have a reverence for our political system akin to a religion. We look to it for comfort when a cruel world batters us and threatens us. We take solace in the constitution the way some rely on the Bible and look on our founding fathers as wise prophets that provided the roadmap that guide us and all future generations. Just as we rely on the book of Job to remind us that sometimes we must simply accept the challenges the Almighty has given us, so we must accept the path a democracy has chosen.

We don’t purport to understand why our citizenry has chosen Barack Obama to lead us for the next four years, but we do know we will embrace him as our President and wish him well for our fate is now inextricably intertwined with his. More importantly, the fates of our children and grandchildren rely upon his decisions and actions. What we truly believe is our republic will endure. It is that well designed and soundly crafted that it will survive any missteps a less experienced leader may make.

One thing, our countrymen must do is hold President Obama to the high standard demanded of a US President. A free press, and active opposition party, and an involved public must serve their role. For all of us that supported another candidate, it is time we stood alongside Barack Obama and point out the path we wish to travel with him. It will not serve any of us well if we allow him to go astray or lead us into the abyss. So put your regrets behind you, there is work for us all to do.

OBAMA'S MEDIA LAP DOGS

The meek manner in which the press is handling the news that Barack Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, is here in the US ILLEGALLY living in Boston public housing ILLEGALLY, and has contributed money to the Obama campaign ILLEGALLY is a testament to the effectiveness of Obama’s anti-free speech thugs. During this campaign the Obama organization has threatened radio stations with legal action, boycotted television stations for asking probing questions, and kicked daily newspaper reporters off the candidate’s aircraft in favor of ethnic monthly entertainment magazines. Half the press is afraid of being branded racist and the other half is afraid of losing access.

Well, we are not afraid. We are mad. Let’s take a look at the story of Obama’s aunt. Onyango, a Kenyan citizen, was reportedly denied political asylum in the US four years ago. This is a subject we know something about, having served as the Political Asylum Officer for the San Francisco District Office of the US Immigration Service. The Obama campaign has released a statement which says, in part, "Senator Obama has no knowledge of her status but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed…" No knowledge, huh, now that sounds familiar. “I never heard Reverend Wright say anything anti American, anti-Israel, or anti-white.” “I never knew William Ayers was an unrepentant terrorist.”

Well, the Obama campaign admits that Onyango attended Obama’s US Senate swearing in ceremony two years ago, has been a guest in the Obama’s home, but has not spoken to Obama, “…for a few months.” OK, follow this logic closely, we don’t want to lose any of you. Barack Obama is an attorney, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, former law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, but he has no knowledge of the immigration status of a near family member whom was a guest in his home and an invited visitor to his swearing in? Either he is the most inept Harvard lawyer ever (we doubt it) or he is a bold faced liar (we suspected it all along) or he believes that his followers are the stupidest sheep ever to cast a ballot (we are certain of it).

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

SEEING THROUGH THE SMOKE

US Navy ships are equipped with anti-missile defenses that spew chaff, metal confetti, into the air to confuse the radar of incoming missiles. We couldn’t help but see the comparisons in the clogging of the media this weekend with pro-Obama propaganda. We hope the American voter will see through the smoke and see the stark reality of their choice, the clearest choice given to the electorate in 50 years. Up front we will admit that both candidates are flawed. Neither was our first choice. However, in the cold, clear light of morning, it comes down to a few criteria:

USS Howard

• Experience. We have one man with a long public record of selflessness and honorable service and we have one man with a past shrouded in mystery and a resume that fits on an index card.
• Who is more centrist? One man has a three decade long record of bi-partisan efforts and has frequently defied his party when it veered too far from the center. One man’s record is remarkable only for it’s brevity and extreme adherence to radical, leftist ideology.
• Trust. One demonstrated his loyalty to his fellow Americans by refusing to leave their side even when it meantt his imprisonment under the most inhumane conditions. One man has repeatedly turned his back on those who nurtured him for years, all for political expediency.
  

It’s the last criterion that we can’t shake. Whatever anyone says about John McCain, we feel confident we know what he will do. Whatever Barack Obama says, no one knows what he will do. Pretty simple.

FANTASY CANDIDATE

A guest pundit on Fox News recently likened the rationale used by Barack Obama’s supporters to explain his continued association with an army of unsavory characters to a “Jedi Mind Trick”. For you who are not fluent in Star Wars terminology the Jedi mind trick is a ruse used to convince the weak minded to ignore the facts and accept the Jedi version of reality. For many of us it is the only possible explanation of a nation’s rush to elect the least qualified President in US history, a man whose past is largely a mystery, a man who counts among his associations a spokesperson of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its terrorist years, a former domestic terrorist who escaped, on a technicality, conviction for bombing a police station and the Pentagon, and a hate mongering pastor whose congregation danced in the aisles while he chanted “God damn America”.

In the past few days we have had revelation after revelation, peeks under the candidate’s mask, giving us a glimpse of the real man.

• Obama tells “Joe The Plumber” things are better when, “…we spread the wealth around.”
• Tape of Obama telling public radio the civil rights movement had not gone far enough because, “The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.”
• The admission of the existence of a video tape of Obama at a party honoring the aforementioned PLO spokesperson, attended by the aforementioned domestic terrorist, at which anti-Israeli remarks went unchallenged by Obama.
  

Two nights ago, comedian Dennis Miller put Obama’s relationship with radical pastor Jerimiah Wright in perspective. He said that his moment of disenchantment came when Obama stated that he went to church twice a month on average. You mean that he sat in the pew listening to Reverend Wright, twice a month for 20 years, listened to nearly 500 sermons, yet claimed he never heard was aware of Wright’s animosity toward whites, the American government, and the state of Israel? Either he is the dumbest man ever to run for US President or he is the most accomplished liar to ever run.

Yesterday evening Sean Hannity reported that Obama associate William Ayers published a terrorist manifesto in 1974 which he dedicated to “political prisoners”, including in the dedication Robert Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. How much more do American voters need before they wake up from this electoral stupor. How much longer will they accept O-B-One-Obama saying, “You never read those words Barack wrote. You never heard Barack say those things. You never saw photos and video showing Barack with those people. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” The force be with you. You’re gonna need it.