Monday, April 14, 2008

Interlude: Baracka Macaca


The old ‘60s hippie anthem advises that “When you go to San Francisco/Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Well, Barack Obama should have stuffed a couple of bunches of peonies in his friggin’ mouth before he went anywhere near the Bay Area. Mr. Obama, who thought he was in a closed fund-raiser and could speak his mind in an unfiltered fashion, forgot the cardinal rule of contemporary life: If you go down a dark alley to take an emergency whiz at 2:00 a.m. in a rain storm, your act will surely be viewable on YouTube before the pavement dries. Yes, there was a troll with a cell phone in the midst of Obama’s crowd, and Barack done got busted bad.

Don’t get me wrong: Obama did nothing other than speak the truth. But you can’t tell a bunch of angry, ignorant, gun-toting, snake-handling, rural bigots that they are angry, ignorant, gun-toting, snake-handling, rural bigots. You have to tell them instead that America is the Light of the World only because America reflects the glow that they shed on this great land by dint of their patriotic fire.

How could things get worse than having delivered this Unspeakable Truth to the Great Unwashed of Appalachia before a crowd probably gay, left-wing, atheist, millionaires in that most Un-American of all possible cities? Hillary—not exactly just plain folks herself—now has an opening to label Obama an “elitist” to an audience that has been trained over the years by the forces of reaction to believe that “elite” is synonymous with “socialist.” Hillary is taking full advantage of that opening. No Clinton ever saw an orifice he wouldn’t thrust himself into.

Good Lord, do I hate politics!