It all played out a little too perfect — a surprise last-minute swoop by Clinton into enemy territory to heroically stare down the world’s most blood-thirsty dictator and rescue two damsels in distress.  The press asked the White House how Bill Clinton became involved in the rescue of the two American women, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, trespassing into North Korea and sentenced to “10 years hard labor.”  They said they had no involvement.  Of course, Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary works for President Obama as Secretary of State; certainly, the press surmised, she must have been responsible.  The response from the State Department was that Bill Clinton was on a “private humanitarian mission.” How does one pull off such an extempore feat without government help?  Why, call a movie mogul — of course!

Steve Bing, the multimillionaire behind “Beowulf” and “The Polar Express,” now has a new blockbuster in his collection — call it “The Pyongyang Express.”  Clearly a man who knows how to make things happen, Bing didn’t have time for protocol, pesky nuclear disarmament concerns or international law.  He fueled up his private Boeing 737 and before you could yell “Action!” a former U.S. President was on his way to meet Kim Jong Ill, a sworn enemy of the United States — who just a month ago was launching missiles aimed precariously close to Hawaii.

But it doesn’t stop there.  As any mogul knows, making the picture is one thing — but it’s all about marketing it big, baby!  No worries, Bing’s Hollywood P.R. firm Rogers & Cowan was brought in to arrange a spectacular homecoming.  Since the women being rescued worked for a company of Academy-Award winning, greenie Al Gore, the firm wisely chose a solar powered facility to accommodate press events.  Meanwhile, the pictures coming back from North Korea were playing out beautifully.  Clinton looked so glum and stern next to a clearly delighted, but frail Kim Jong-Il.  It reminded the world how wonderful Clinton can play emotions for the cameras: “In this scene, Bill, you are meeting a man who wants to take over the world — remember, you’re Luke Skywalker, and he’s Darth Vader.”

Back in Tinseltown, the set folks were readying a hangar at Bob Hope International Airport in Burbank for our hero’s triumphant return.  No official U.S. government personnel in this scene.  No, this is where tears are shed, and father-figure Al Gore emerges to hug the dear employees he feared were lost forever.  One of the rescued women said Clinton’s team was “super-cool,” and she was right.  Welcome to the A-List sweetheart.  No disrespect to the woman, but the team may have done too much of a super-cool perfect job — usually prisoners look a little more shaken and stirred as they descend the airplane steps back into captivity.

These rescued prisoners had make-up, wardrobe and perfect hair that gleamed under the lights of the awaiting cameras.  Thankfully, no hard labor evident.  But something about this blockbuster leaves the audience feeling a tad anxious after the credits roll.  After all, the bar has certainly been raised.  Will there be more cinematic rescues of American captives — servicemen and women in Afghanistan who are taken by the Taliban or captured in Iraq by roving militias?  The three “hikers” who crossed into Iran and were taken prisoner?  Should Clinton be dropped by helicopter onto ships seized by Somali pirates?

We’ll have to wait for the sequel.

Gloria Steinem

In any case, in the spirit of compromise, let us pretend that each of the following paragraphs begins “It’s only my opinion, but…” 

When Gloria Steinem, who had been lionized by the ladies of NOW for her rather dumb remark about women needing men like fish needed bicycles, finally got married at the age of 66, I thought people should have sent her greeting cards complimenting her on having belatedly grown gills. 

In recent weeks, Canadians caught Somali pirates who had attacked a Norwegian tanker, but released them because they were unable to prosecute them under Canadian law.  In another case, Dutch commandos captured and then released Somali pirates who had attacked a Portuguese ship.  It seems to me that until the day comes that these Somali punks command battleships or destroyers, the most logical way to deal with them is to blow them and their little speedboats to Kingdom Come. 

About a month ago, I looked up George Soros at Wikipedia and read about his helping the Nazis confiscate the property of his fellow Hungarian Jews when he was a teenager.  At the same time and place, I read that in response to a Steve Croft question on “60 Minutes,” Soros claimed that he had never regretted doing it or felt any shame or remorse afterwards because, as he explained, if he hadn’t done it, someone else would have.  The other day, I re-visited the site and the entire episode had vanished.  There still remained the mention of his having been convicted by a French court of insider trading.  I am now wondering if billionaire Soros will make certain that it, too, disappears. 

As much as I disapprove of Obama’s policies, what I truly find distasteful is the way he travels around the world apologizing for America, even to the likes of Hugo Chavez and the Castros.  He bows to King Abdullah, cozies up to Ahmadinejad and tells the French — the French! — that America is arrogant. 

When, by the way, do we stop apologizing for slavery? For one thing, most of our ancestors didn’t even arrive in this country until 40 or 50 years after 600,000 Americans died in a war that put an end to it.  For another, most of the African slaves didn’t come to the United States; many more were delivered to the Caribbean and South America, courtesy of France, Germany, Spain, England, Sweden, Holland and Portugal.  And lest we forget, it was the Arabs and their fellow blacks who rounded them up for the slave traders in the first place.  Which makes it sadly ironic that so many American blacks, including Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, assumed Arabic names.  Finally, one of the only places, aside from Communist nations, the Middle East and Thailand, where slavery still endures is in Africa! 

Finally, it occurs to me that perhaps I’ve been wrong in opposing same-sex marriages. I regard it as a dumb idea, sort of like one of those silly sketches they  perform on “Saturday Night Live.” Still, although no one who has chewed me out for my position has ever bothered to explain why if homosexuals are allowed to get married, on what possible moral or legal basis anyone could then object to incestuous or polygamous marriages, I am considering changing my mind.  After all, why should we straights discriminate against those in the gay community?  Why should we deny them the boundless delight that so many of us have experienced over the years dealing with divorce lawyers, engaging in custody battles and paying alimony to able-bodied adults? 

But, heck, that’s only my opinion. 

BurtPrelutsky@aol.com

All of that changed on the 15th of April, when a series of tea parties took place all across America.  Even I, who try to avoid crowds, attended a gathering here in the San Fernando Valley. 

If you believe the creeps in the MSM — and why would you? — we were all dues-paying members of political fringe groups, and none of us would think about leaving the house without first donning our little aluminum hats.  If you believe Janet Napolitano — and how could you? — we were not merely man-created disasters like Somali pirates and Islamic butchers, but full-fledged terrorists.  Some among us even confessed to being military veterans. 

Well, either she is very wrong or I am.  To me, the 3,000 people who showed up at the Van Nuys Civic Center looked like pretty decent, average Americans.  But, not being the head of Homeland Security, I can’t claim to be an expert when it comes to spotting terrorists.  Heck, all I know is that when I look at the likes of Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Patrick Leahy, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Lee, my blood runs cold, and when I hear Barack Obama pushing his socialist agenda and reaching out to the likes of Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck.  It’s like watching one of those really creepy movies, but instead of all the scary stuff taking place on Elm Street, it occurs on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

At the get-together I attended, we were rallied, aroused and amused, by such speakers as comedian Evan Sayet, actress Morgan Brittany and talk show host Kevin James.  In fact, my only problem with the event, aside from my decision to wear tennis shorts on a night the temperature dipped into the low 50s, was that the entire focus was on Obama’s insane fiscal policy.  I in no way wish to suggest that the bail-outs, the budget and the so-called stimulus package, don’t remind me of something Dr. Frankenstein would have cobbled together in the castle’s basement if his master plan, like Obama’s, had been to destroy capitalism.   

However, there are so many other things about the man and his mission that I find terrifying, I hate to have us so busy concentrating on his left hand while, with his right, he muzzles the conservative media; destroys our missile defense capability; funnels funds to ACORN, AmeriCorps and Hamas; nationalizes the banks and takes control of the automotive industry; and, for good measure, discusses nuclear disarmament with Russia while trusting the U.N. to deal with Iran and North Korea.

So, while I regard Obama’s plan to use the tax code to impoverish productive Americans while using tax rebates to bribe those who don’t even pay income taxes as a vile left-wing plot, I’d hate to have my fellow conservatives so completely focused on this one area that they fail to see all the other tricks this con artist has up his sleeve. 

Something that has bothered me over the years is the way the lamebrains in the left-stream media invariably turn into unlicensed shrinks whenever a Republican is in the White House, but toss a dust cover over the couch as soon as he’s replaced by a Democrat.   

For instance, how many times did we hear liberals babbling about the psychological demons George W. Bush had to contend with because of his allegedly troubled relationship with Dad?  But the fact that Bill Clinton’s father was a drunken bully apparently left no emotional scars on Bill’s impenetrable psyche.  Furthermore, I have yet to hear such eminent Freudians as Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Frank Rich or Keith Olbermann, even suggest that being deserted by both his father and his step-father, spending his formative years in the alien culture of Indonesia, only to be dumped, at the age of 10, on his white relatives in Hawaii, may have turned Obama into a smooth-talking, narcissistic psychopath incapable of telling the truth even if it’s about something as relatively inconsequential as sending his kids to a public school and getting them a mutt from a shelter. 

Now, of course, I’m not saying he is any of those things.  But don’t you think if he had wound up after experiencing all that early trauma as somebody who believed in a free market economy; in supporting Israel against the barbarians; in opposing late-term abortions; in calling terrorism by its rightful name; in attending a church that had more in common with Rick Warren’s than with Jeremiah Wright’s; and in sharing the Constitutional interpretations of Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia, the media would have long ago concluded that even if he wasn’t exactly the Manchurian Candidate, he was definitely a booby who needed to be hatched? 

BurtPrelutsky@aol.com

But last week, as I watched the situation unfold from Studio D (a comfy perch protected by armed security) I couldn’t help but be reminded of one simple fact that led to this event: the unarmed are always vulnerable to the armed.

And that made me realize that this ship is no different than a shopping mall or college campus – it’s a place where people congregate or work – all operating under the assumption that we live in a sane world where if you just live your life, people won’t kill you.

Not always. In a free world, we forget how easy it is for thugs and psychopaths to take advantage of that freedom.

Which is why good people need guns.

I mean, how can a tanker that size – it’s a town on water – be so vulnerable to a pack of underweight thugs?

The underweight thugs had guns.

Seriously – I don’t get the argument against arming a few folks on planes, ships and campuses. If bozos like me in the media are protected by armed dudes at every turnstile, why can’t we have the same for undergrads or seamen?

I also get the argument that no employee of a company needs to risk his life to protect cargo that isn’t his. But tell that to Brinks. They drive around with far less valuable stuff – and they’re armed to the hilt. And come on – if you had a relative on a ship, or working at a mall, for that matter – you’d want to know they’re safe.

So Sunday was truly an amazing day for America and our military. But let’s try preventing this crap from happening again. A three inch 50 caliber might be a start. I hear it goes great with a cable knit sweater and a pea coat.

Tonight we’ve got Monica Crowley, Liz Wiel, comedian Joe Devito, and some other surprises!

The situation presents a perfect opportunity for:

A. Hollywood to produce an exciting action/adventure film based on real world events.

B. The American president to make a rousing and pointed statement on his firm support of the rule of international law on the open seas and how he’ll defend the safety of his citizens if endangered anywhere on Earth.

I predict you have a better chance of being abducted by said pirates at your local McDonald’s than you have of seeing either of the above actually occur. Why?  Both Hollywood and Obama are held hostage by the same childish, simple-minded worldview that curses all hard left art and politics (a refrain I’ve sung before and will chirp about again): “The strong are always bad. The weak are always good.”

You might say, “Wait! Aren’t armed pirates the bullies here? Aren’t they ’strong’ movie villains?” They can’t be because, no matter how many unarmed merchant ships are taken at the point of their assault rifles, no producer in Hollywood is likely to make a movie with African villains. It’s not politically correct to pose ethnic minorities as antagonists — even when they’re not really ethnic minorities because the story would take place in Africa.

So, you’re not likely to see Bruce Willis lead a team of Navy SEALs onto the deck of a rusting freighter full of cutthroats unless you can find a way to cast wealthy western European and American men as said pirates. Actually, I might be on to a pitch there: “Bruce Willis takes on a team of American CEOs (fired from their jobs by the Obama Administration) who turn to a life of piracy off Somalia.” I’ll call my agent.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Obama literally has nothing to say about the Somali pirates taking an American captain prisoner. It’s a no-win scenario for the president to open his rarely noiseless mouth on this crisis. After all, those pirates are most likely poor and frightened. It wouldn’t be enlightened and compassionate to tell the captors to let the American citizen and his crew go lest Navy snipers unburden their skulls of their brains.

Even worse, they probably don’t speak English and have never been inspired by one of the President’s speeches. Would they let the crewmen go free in return for copies of Obama’s autobiography and this month’s edition of Oprah’s magazine? No. That could backfire. They might doubt their own ability to take more innocent men hostage at gun point until they realize, “Yes, we can!”

The bottom line is, if you want Obama to take forceful, vengeful action, you’re going to have to find some rich Americans he can punish for their rude success. And, if you want Hollywood to make a modern pirate movie, find a Somali warlord Ralph Fiennes can play.