Burt’s Eye View: Obama’s World and Welcome to It

by Burt Prelutsky

Many people were offended to see Barack Obama once again bowing to a foreign dignitary, the Emperor of Japan.  For my part, I was actually relieved that at least this latest breech of protocol didn’t involve his kowtowing to one of America’s sworn enemies. 

As most people are well aware, I have nothing but loathing for Obama’s policies, but even I am amazed by his reluctance to handle what I regard as the easy part of his job; namely, carrying off his responsibilities to be a figurehead, to be the proud symbol of this great and generous nation. 

obama_bow

Instead, he tours the world on our dime apologizing for our alleged failings and transgressions.  He goes to Denmark in order to lobby for the Olympics, in order that his corrupt Chicago cronies could cash in on crooked land deals, but he doesn’t go to Germany to help commemorate the falling of the Berlin Wall.  Next, instead of expressing the grief that every decent American felt over the slaughter of American soldiers and an unborn baby by an Islamic terrorist, this bozo gave a partisan shout-out at a Native American shindig.  Then, for good measure, he warned us not to jump to the conclusion that the Islamic terrorist was an Islamic terrorist. 

If someone set out to show his utter contempt for this country and his disconnect from anything smacking of patriotism, including donning a lapel flag, pledging allegiance to the flag or covering his heart at the playing of our national anthem, he’d find it impossible to out-do our president. 

I’m sure that a lot of us still recall the silent messages that American POWs sent us in photos taken by their North Vietnamese captors.  They would hold their fingers in different ways to express their defiance of the enemy.  I often find myself wondering what messages Barack Obama is sending, and to whom. 

Recently, a friend sent me an email in which it was proposed that the Constitution be improved with a 28th amendment.  It read: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and the Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.” 

I think that in 2010, any senator or representative, Republican or Democrat, who doesn’t sign on to co-sponsor the amendment should have to start looking for another job.  I would also press for my wife’s 29th amendment, which states that when America’s economy takes a nosedive, the salaries of our elected officials are decreased to the same degree.  After all, they’re not supposed to profit from their own corruption or incompetence.  I mean, these goofballs work for us, not AIG or Goldman Sachs.

This past week, a reader sent me an email in which he referred to me as a philosopher.  Even though I knew he intended it as a compliment, I denied it.  A philosopher, it seems to me, is a person whose main preoccupation is figuring out why man exists and, whereas I believe the obvious answer is to keep the dogs fed, housed and bathed, the best he can come up with is that man exists so that he can ask why man exists. 

Speaking of email, I often receive stuff that’s been floating around in cyberspace for years.  I used to get annoyed when someone would send me something I’d already been sent 10 or 20 times, but, after finding that I’d passed along such things myself, I realized that if something was new to you, you had no way of knowing it had whiskers on it.  Therefore, I suggest that whoever is the first person to send out these things should time-stamp it so that when it finally reaches me in 2015, I’ll know it’s been floating around for several years. 

Getting back to Obama, how is it that there are still people around who regard him as a great orator instead of just a cheese-head who requires a teleprompter just to say “Hello,” and, for good measure, has this really annoying habit of turning…….every sentence into two distinct parts?  But perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised.  After all, apparently there’s a sizable segment of the population that is unable to tell that a can of beer is cold unless it turns blue. 

I’m also aware that there are a lot of people who refuse to believe that Obama is anything but a regular Yankee Doodle Dandy, as American as Mom’s apple pie, in spite of the fact that in “Dreams From My Father,” he wrote that in college, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully.  Those friends,” he wrote, were “The  more politically active black students.  The foreign students.  The Chicanos.  The Marxist professors and structural feminists.” 

He also wrote about venturing into the East Village for “the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union.”  Then, in search of additional inspiration, “I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia.” 

The fact is that even after college, he was still cherry-picking his friends.  As we all know, they included such various Marxists, Maoists and Mau Maus, as, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Frank Davis, Anita Dunn, Louis Farrakhan, Raila Ordinga, Sass Sunstein, Andy Stern and Rashid Khalidi. 

Frankly, I think he would have come up with a more savory circle of friends if he had made his selection from Wanted posters adorning the walls of the local post office.  

That group should tell you all you need to know about this menace who manages, simultaneously, to be a narcissist, a Marxist and as humorless as Joseph Stalin on a bad hair day.


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Posted Nov 26th 2009 at 2:46 pm in Politics | 106 Comments