Mad Magazine reigns supreme in creating a satirical crucible through which all subjects, social, cultural, political, artistic and philosophical typically pass.  The difference between valid satire and mere mockery being, of course, the elements of truth contained therein, it is sometimes difficult to rule out former as as being buried so deeply in the latter as to be inconsequential, particularly during political campaigns.  The editors of Mad would likely say that if such a line is drawn, they erase it, but nonetheless credibility rests on facts in satirical endeavors, humor being in the manner of delivery. 

Ignorance Is Strength...

All this comes to mind partially as a result of hearing, for the umpteenth time, that horrid, superciliously intoned little chant that goes “Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, Barack Hussein Obama…” as sung by the children in that “unauthorized” Burlington Township School District video that is making the rounds.  The message being obvious and well-analyzed elsewhere, let us not forget how disturbingly cloying and memetically insidious the song is, in and of itself.  Even the 1910 Fruitgum Company, acknowledged masters of the form, would be hard-pressed to corkscrew such a tenaciously mind-numbing ditty into the listener’s skull.

–

The mind reels.  The brain, in a desperate attempt to exorcise the alien and excruciatingly insufferable mental loop, invents its own lyrics to alleviate the suffering, at least temporarily:

Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo
Barack Hussein Obama
Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo
I’ll tell my daddy and momma

Two, four, six, eight
Let’s build a liberal fascist state

Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo…

The President of the United States is
Black so all dissent is racist

Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo…

Remember all that you are taught
His problems all are Bush’s fault

Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo…

Little ones to him belong
We are weak but he is strong

Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo…

Redistributive justice rules
So we will be our Leader’s tools

Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo
Barack Hussein Obama
Ooooo, Ooooo, Ooooo
I’ll tell my daddy and momma

But not even Weird Al Yankovic would touch that one.  Better to catch a chunk of concrete upside the head at a G20 protest in the act of dissent than go there, such dissent, contrary to the President’s own honest assessment, being instantly equated with the evils of race-hatred by those who would silence opposing viewpoints.  Well-heeled anarchists can surely yell “no borders, no banks,” block traffic and hurl garbage all day to further the destruction of capitalism.  That’s healthy, and double-plus so for those who favor the particular dissent that would herald the end of  the aforementioned economic system.

Thus, the temptation to round up a gaggle of youngsters to sing the horrid little satirical ditty of unknown origin mentioned above, record it on a cell phone, and snag a cheap zillion hits by posting it to YouTube is quashed.  Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.

But, really, nobody does it better than these folks:

We have always been at war with Eastasia, er, Westhollywood...

The People’s Cube – Correct Opinions for Progressive Liberals – Political Humor & Satire

Funny stuff, highly recommended, and fans of Thomas Jefferson will likely approve.

So just as the other networks predicted, the April 15th tea parties were nothing but cauldrons brimming with rage. Rage against Obama, rage against the government, rage against these troubled times. Take a look for yourself.

(Roll footage of recent New York City anti-Israel protests, with their hate filled signs and chants)

Oh, sorry. Wrong tape. (We must have a new guy in the control room, probably from MSNBC). Anyway, while I was watching the protests, I couldn’t help but feel the anger building among these folks – and I knew it wouldn’t be long before their fury would turn frightening. Like here:

(Roll footage of G20 protesters rioting and smashing bank windows in London)

Whoops. My apologies – we can`t seem to get this right. Anyway, can we actually show some real footage of what went on yesterday?

(roll footage of actual tea parties)

Yep – those look like real extremists.

Actually, they look like people who own riding mowers. Fact is, I couldn’t find one violent incident among hundreds of demonstrations that took place during this synchronized event. Granted, I didn’t look too hard – but seriously: why is that not the story of the day?

I mean, not one person threw a chair through a store window. But that’s probably because that person owns the store. Or at least knows someone who owns the store.

Also, I noticed that most people at the parties were kinda like me – over 40 and overweight – and it’s hard to throw chairs when you get winded throwing a Frisbee.

But no matter – whether or not you care – the MSM would rather have you look at these people not just as jokes – but as cranks. Which is why someone needs to buy Susan Roesgen a mirror.

Did you miss our President’s servile bow before the Saudi King in London? If you blinked you did, because the mainstream media have virtually ignored this significant gesture. The left, of course, on the rare occasion that they even acknowledge the incident, dismiss the bow as a stumble, a search for a dropped contact lens, a sudden bout of abdominal pain, anything but what it unmistakably was … a full-on deferential dip to the ruler of another country. And not just any country, but the home of the most active disseminators of the fundamentalist ideology that seeks our destruction. The left always got a big, derisive (as Obama might say) laugh out of George W. Bush’s hand-holding with the Saudi sheikhs, but while that may have been a distasteful gesture, at least it was not a subservient one.

Imagine how this symbolic obeisance will play out in the Arab media, which already feed distortions and ludicrous anti-American and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to the Muslim world day and night (remember, it was media giant al-Jazeera, an organ of anti-Western disinformation that serves essentially the same function as the New York Times here, that promoted the insane but persistent rumor that all the Jews at the World Trade Center were secretly warned to stay home on the morning of 9/11). The American president bowed to a Muslim – this will confirm for Islamists everywhere that Islam is superior to the West, that America does not have the pride or resolve to oppose the Islamist tide, and that the Great Satan’s days are numbered. 

The bow could not have been accidental. It is surely part of Obama’s determination to show the Muslim world R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and to compel our enemies to “like us” (I’ve written about this before on Big Hollywood). He believes that if we respectfully explain to the enemy that we’re not the enemy, then our enemy will stop trying to kill us. I’m no Victor Davis Hanson, but I’m pretty sure that that wartime strategy has never worked in the history of mankind. 

“We will convey,” said Obama to the Turkish Parliament, “our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including in my own country.” Oh, it’s definitely done much to shape the world, and it certainly reshaped the New York City skyline, but somehow I doubt that Obama meant this as ironically as I do. (Scholar Robert Spencer demolishes the President’s strange claim here.) 

Mark my words, it won’t be long before Obama refers to our “Judeo-Christian-Muslim heritage.” In his first interview as President, on the al-Arabiya network, Obama described America as “a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers. . .” Of course, he was addressing an Arab/Muslim audience at the time, but this was nevertheless a curious and revealing ordering of this list. It leads off with Muslims, who constitute barely over half of one percentage point of the U.S. population; then Jews, who are nearly three times more populous here than Muslims; then Christians, who in the broadest definition constitute over 75% of Americans; and finally non-believers. By listing Muslims first, the President endowed them with a demographic significance vastly out of proportion with reality (at least in the U.S.; Europe is another story) – which is exactly the kind of high profile the Islamists want for Islam in America. 

But back to Turkey. Obama stressed that we are not at war with Islam (suggesting that this is somehow a different attitude from his predecessor; but Bush never wasted an opportunity to remind the world that Islam is “a religion of peace”). Why is it incumbent only on America and our allies to ease Muslim concerns? The issue is not that we are at war with Islam, but that radical Islam is at war with us – so why are there no Muslim world leaders publicly reassuring us that Islam is not at war with the West? Instead, in return what we get is Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of the supposedly moderate Turkey, who has said “there is no moderate Islam,” who told Turkish immigrants in Europe that “assimiliation is a crime against humanity,” and who stormed out of the Davos conference recently after lambasting Israel’s president over Gaza, making Erdogan a hero among militant Muslims. 

But Obama didn’t go bowing and scraping only to the Muslim world. To Europe he reaffirmed his commitment to emasculate America into a European nation. Apologizing to the French, no less, for our arrogance and our derisiveness (pause for a moment to consider the mind-bending irony of that concept), he said, “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.” Wrong, Mr. President, it is you who has a failure to appreciate America’s leading role in the world. It is you who is not projecting American strength and will and power. It is you who are conveying to the world that we are now ready to abandon American exceptionalism and embrace a new “global regime” in a post-American world. 

“America is a critical actor and leader on the world stage, and we shouldn’t be embarrassed about that,” he said in London. Excuse me, but the only ones “embarrassed” about American power, American sovereignty, American success, and American leadership are socialist trans-nationalists like Obama. No wonder he is the president of Michael Moore’s wet dreams (sorry for that image). 

Wait, there’s more: “We exercise our leadership best when we are listening, when we recognize the world is a complicated place and that we are going to have to act in partnership with other countries, when we lead by example, when we show some element of humility and recognize we may not always have the best answer.” 

Pardon me while I vomit.  We exercise our leadership best when we are listening?  Obama has now gone from believing that talk will solve everything, to believing that listening will solve everything. The only more passive step remaining is for America to stretch out like a doormat and let the rest of the world goosestep over us as they march toward the rosy post-American dawn. 

When have we not recognized that the world is complicated? When have we not acted in partnership with other countries? Even in Afghanistan and Iraq, often considered the height of our so-called “arrogance,” we never acted alone. But working with partners does not mean that our partners get equal say. Why should American decisions and actions be dependent on the approval of Spain, for example, a country that caved in to terrorism at light speed after the ghastly Madrid train bombing in 2003, and which is now seeking to prosecute American leaders for war crimes? 

In the picture above, our president is clutching – also not accidentally – Fareed Zakaria’s book The Post-American World, which posits that American preeminence is giving way to a gaggle of competing new superpowers. Zakaria himself said of Obama’s overseas tour: “For America to continue to lead the world, we will have to first join it” – a clever, cutesy soundbite that is as logical as a Zen koan. What he’s getting at, and what Obama seems to be actively pursuing, is that America must cease being America and become just another actor in an ensemble cast. This is a prescription for national suicide and international disaster, not global utopia. Maybe instead, as Mark Steyn said in America Alone, the rest of the world should join America.

First, he gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown some DVDs that were incompatible with English electronics and then he gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod that contained his speeches.  Well, I hate to admit it, but I can empathize.  Shopping for a prime minister has got to be hard enough, but trying to shop for a woman who has her own country would give me the mother of all migraines.  Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t just fall back on that old reliable.  When in doubt, I say, you can’t go wrong giving cash.  Which, by the way, seems to be one of the things, as opposed to bowling and speaking without a TelePrompter, at which the president seems to be quite adept.  And, best of all, the cash, unlike the iPod, would be a personal gift because the Queen’s picture would be on it.

But I have to admit I’m beginning to really worry about the Community Organizer in Chief.  I mean, he ran for president as the man who was going to make the world love us like nobody’s loved us, come rain or come shine.  Instead, he’s turned into the master of the gag gift.  I can’t help wondering what this practical joker is going to do next.  Send Prime Minister Netanyahu a honey-baked ham?  Send Mahmud Ahmadinejad a pair of elevator shoes?  Send Pope Benedict XVI a whoopee cushion? 

Frankly, though, I must confess I don’t know why we’re so concerned with how other countries feel about us.  Do you think anyone likes Russia or China, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia?  Do you think Mexico, France or Cuba lie awake nights wondering if Holland will be inviting them to the annual tulip festival?  Do you actually believe that Japan calls up Korea on a Friday afternoon and suggests they go bowling?  Or perhaps you imagine that any country in the world has ever in its entire life said, “You know who I’ve really been missing lately?  Let’s throw a come-as-you-are party and invite good old Germany!”

–

How about that bit of groveling before the Saudi King? “No, no, no, he wasn’t bowing!” said the loyal press contingent! ….no… “The president was reaching for something on the floor.” Oh hell, just spit it out!  It was a DVD of that sci-fi horror classic, “It! Sharia From Beyond Space,” wasn’t it! It fell out of the hole that Karl Rove neatly tore in your jacket. How else do you explain that bow?  You gawk, like a newborn camel, mysteriously fumbling about, and then we must listen to an American president kill, through disremembering, the memory of shed blood, leadership, proper pride, and financial philanthropy what have been the hallmark of American exceptionalism. These things were evident at least for as long as you were a… what?  A Com…..Community Organizer?  Is that what you once were? 

Charles Krauthammer properly characterized your behavior while appearing on Fox News:

Well where does one begin? Obama says, in America there is a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. …Well maybe it’s because when there was a civil war on Europe’s doorstep, in the Balkans, a genocide, it didn’t lift a finger until America led. Maybe it’s because when there was an invasion of Kuwait, it didn’t lift a finger until America led.  it’s because with America spending over half a trillion a year, keeping open the sea lanes in defending the world, Europe is spending pennies on defense. It’s hard to appreciate an entity’s leading role in the world, when it’s been sucking on your teat for sixty years as Europe has, in regard to the United States parasitically! …And then he (Obama ) goes on and he calls America arrogant, dismissive and derisive, regarding Europe…….I think what he did in order to gain the adoration of the crowds… he denigrated his country, in a way that I think is disgraceful.

Some United States citizens, Mr. President, cannot imagine why you would devalue the country that you supposedly represent. We noticed how easily upset you were to both spoken and written criticism. You publicly whined when you thought Sean Hannity, a mere talk show entrepreneur, wasn’t being fair with his public critiques of you and your mentor Jeremiah Wright.  You kicked three journalists off your plane because their respective papers didn’t support your presidency, and there was an observable reluctance to call on a TV correspondent from Fox News for quite some time. You are sensitive to things said about you, and yet you’re just brimming with cold and cavalier language about the great American populace that has elevated you to the pinnacle of world influence. Why?

When you return home, how sad it will be that you will not have been able to leave what you said in some tawdry saloon, perhaps spoken under the influence of alcohol or another depressant, and therefore forgivable by some stretch of the imagination. Unfortunately, nothing will prevent you from bringing the fruit of your painstaking and laborious speechifying back with you.  And please don’t tell us, in your familiar way, that you inherited the very particular discord that will surely follow your return, as your fellow United States citizens finally realize that your revolution was nothing more than a turgid European melon;  green on the outside and on the inside, very, very red!

Individual countries pale compared to America. So contrast my relative shame as a global citizen with my pride, excitement and honor of being a member of the United States of America. Our country is the best. I’d say that we’re not perfect, but I hate opening any kind of door for the America haters to drive their Prius through. We have good standards, fund charities around the world and have left more of our bodies in the graveyards of other countries to defend and expand liberty than any other country in the history of the world. Our economy is the singularity of the Big Bang from which prosperity flows to the rest of the world.

So it pains me to watch my President stand among the G20 leaders as he works hard to fit in with a bunch of really stupid countries. I admit it, I’m a jealous citizen and I don’t like to share the attention and will of my president with the rest of the world. He’s mine, not theirs. The world may think they elected President Obama, and perhaps even Obama may think that, but I don’t have a vote in the Global Community. I don’t get to participate in how China must conduct herself so I’d rather my president not give away our power, treasure and values to fit in with a global consensus of lesser countries than our own.

The U.S. Constitution is the rarest of documents and our execution of what it says has separated our country’s history from the rest of the world and made us objectively better. America is not a pile of soil. We aren’t a location. In fact, if we ever move the U.S. to the moon I’ll be the first on the ship and to hell with the Earth. The Global Community has no such miraculous document. It has no self-evident truth as its charter, instead it has global consensus.

The G20 anarchists held signs that read “One World” “One Country” “One Currency.” This should strike a barf-triggering chord through the heart of every independent American. I have no vow to Europe, no allegiance to Egypt. The president is supposed to represent me to Europe and it feels like he’s representing Europe to me. After all, the only reason Europe loves him is because President Obama will give them more candy than Bush. They didn’t hate Bush because of Iraq, they hated him because Bush wouldn’t sell us out to gain their acceptance. The G20 has their self-interest intact. Though many G20s have a corrupt charter, Obama is their work-around. Why reform your country to get better income when you can stay corrupt and Obama will redistribute the sovereignty of our economy to the G20?

Our country is not a peer of the G20. Our country is better than every other country in the world. Not because we’re white or black, or born in this or that hemisphere, or because of our GDP, but because of our values, our charter, our adherence to the Constitution. So the idea that we have just one vote amid twenty countries when we represent almost half of G20’s combined GDP is a foolish play on President Obama’s part. I long for the days when we stood for our values and held the disgust of the rest of the world in high regard.

Good morning, and welcome to the 34th Annual Bobby-Bash in East London, England!  Today’s event promises to be ripping with action and a jolly tough competition!  As you recall, after yesterday’s bash the Anarchists hold a slight lead over the Bobbies, having yesterday knocked seventeen helmets off policemen’s heads and conked five Bobbies with protest signs and flying bottles; but in the third Over, the Bobbies rallied a strong surge with some fine baton swatting and scored twelve bloody noggins upon the Anarchists. An umpire disallowed three of those, however, in the sixth Over, due to a BPC infringement (or Blatant Posturing for Cameras, i.e., exacerbating of the head wound and rubbing of the blood all over the face), which is clearly against International League Bobby Bashing Association rules.

It’s rumoured by some ILBBA officials that Blatant Posturing by the Anarchists has been steadily on the rise, and that unless something is done to reign in the such over-acting, and what one BBC columnist vehemently decried as, “sympathy sucking”, the spirit of the games “…could be tarnished irrevocably!  And therein, I ask you, where lays our…tradition of…”   The anonymous columnist was unable to continue his remarks, and, so overcome with emotion was he, that he was forced to retreat to the Ten Bells English Pub and counsel with his awaiting and anonymous three pints of Guinness.

“Our international reputation is what’s at stake here,” declared one nameless Member of Parliament.  “If we allow blatant posturing violations to continue unabated, it could arouse a general notion that these games are not organized, and that the violent action is willy-nilly mayhem.  Then how shall our civilized national past time be viewed within international circles?”

How indeed!  Already, some in the press, particularly the American press, are suggesting that these games are in some way uncontrolled and chaotic; completely random acts of ‘violence’, if you can believe!  There have even been some misguided reporters cynical enough to term our Bobby-Bash tournaments as ‘riots’.  Absurd!

I would remind our intrepid American friends that these games in no way represent anything approaching a civil situation out of control.  These fine athletes, on both sides of the barricades, are trained and dedicated professional gamesmen, and play these games in strict adherence to the Rules of Play according to the prevailing ILBBA.  My esteemed colleagues and I would wish to extend at this time an offer to any member of the American press to participate in our next tournament personally, and judge for themselves if this activity was not the finest example of competitive sportsmanship ever indulged in, in this century or any other.

American football has its enticements, granted – but few sporting events can compare to the absolute romping thrill of a good plate-glass bank window smash… or a torched Bobby patrol car… or even the simple Bobby gang-stomp.

We are not without our imperfections, however.  The League has long attempted to rectify some of the inadequacies inherent in the rules.  For instance, some have offered that we should allow the Bobbies to use chin straps to make it harder for the Anarchists to knock them from their heads.  Parliament has been debating this one for years, though, and for now, the rule remains ‘no straps allowed’.  Two-sided sticky tape is, as always, the preferred alternative.

One important innovation in the rules:  If either a Bobby or an Anarchist goes down, then kicking and stomping is limited to a humane sixty-second time limit, at which point the stompers must withdraw and allow the stompee to regain footing.  Normal play then resumes.

Also, the League has recently disallowed non-municipal concrete chunks being hurled at the coppers.  Only chunks weighing over a half-Kilo and not more than three Kilos, consisting of crumbled London Municipal buildings are allowed in play.   No building materials from outlying suburbs will be allowed to be thrown.

Fires used with accelerants are not allowed, and subject to penalty, unless contained in a League-sanctioned Molotov cocktail form.  And if a Bobby becomes engulfed in flames over 50% of his body, play is suspended for five minutes while the officer’s flaming body is extinguished by game officials.

Wet rags over the Anarchists face are not allowed unless tear gas has already been released, and then only if hurling 1-kilo concrete chunks at police lines, in which case they are allowed; and as of last year, the keffiyeh may be worn at all times, in tolerant deference to Islam, the religion of peace.

Sadly, many Christian peaceniks have suggested that the competition be halted after six days of extended violence, in keeping with traditional Church of England traditions; allowing the police water cannons to shut it down, in observance of Sunday requiescence.  (The poor coppers have little recourse without the water cannon, hopelessly unarmed and outnumbered as they are; thrashed and shoved by the huge crowds, seeming at times little more than mice being swatted about by some playful yet lethal house cat.)

But for now, the games will play on…until the death toll rises above ten souls…or the Anarchists get tired, or bored, or simply run out of drugs and decide to move back into their holes.

In other news…concurrently, there also seems to be some sort of gathering of political leaders nearby, something about a “G-20″ or some such thing.  I believe it’s involving the economy, or money …but I’m not entirely sure.  I will research it and get back to you on that.

For now…back to the games!