So I have a perverse sense of humor, and watching the current administration make pratfall, after pratfall, and yet one more pratfall is as much fun as one of those slapstick movies where some hapless oaf is launched out of his house, slapped on the head by a board, skates downhill in a runaway bathtub, and winds up neck deep in a pond where a duck craps on his head… you get the idea. Sort of like the elaborate sequence in “The Money Pit” where Tom Hanks does something pretty much like that.
And the Obama-man has no stunt double to take the pratfall, either … but seriously, didn’t we see this coming? Didn’t all of us who were paying attention lo, these many months ago, know that he was a gorgeously empty suit, with absolutely zip on his resume and a lot of disreputable Chicago friends, carried across the finish line by an adoringly sycophantic media? I just never thought the crackup would be this operatically spectacular, and draw in so many other parties … or be as much fun to watch, over the last few weeks. I also didn’t know that my political sense was that fine-tuned, but that’s what five or six years of hanging out in the more cerebral corners of the blogosphere will get you – the accumulated wisdom and observances of a whole lot of observant, relatively detached and thoughtful people.

And watching that portion of the formerly mainstream media flop around like a landed fish, over being upstaged and scooped – in Jon Stewarts’ inimitable description – by the cast of High School Musical 3, a hidden camera, and a grandmother’s chinchilla coat! Oh my – this is beyond satisfying. It is delicious, like a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. Just desserts, just hors de oeuvres, a just main course of crow! (to quote another radical centrist of my generation, P.J O’Rourke.) Oh, the crew of Sixty Minutes must be in a state of helpless envy, grinding their teeth to a powder by now, and wondering why, why, why did they never think of it, why, why, why didn’t some alert producer round up a couple of interns with mad improv skilz … but it’s too late now. Even Sixty Minutes’ audience joined the Geritol set, a couple of decades ago … and the thought of their top reportorial talent dressing up as a hooker and her pimp doesn’t bear considering, at least not without scouring that mental image out of your mind with a couple of gallons of bleach and some steel wool.

And then on top of it all, to read about the National Endowment for the Arts sitting on the sidelines during a conference call to recruit the a selected portion of the oh-so-arty set to burnish the cred of the current administration, in the finest tradition of socialist regimes everywhere. Oh, my f**ing God … me, I am a semi-oh-well-not-so-starving-artist-writer, always on the prowl for an editing or writing job that will pay the next due utility bill and maybe a bit more, so it does not behoove me to be snotty about earning a living from one’s art … but really, people – taking a gov’ment check to glorify the Chief Executive, all his works and all his ways? Reminds me of the old joke wherein the punch-line is “We’ve already established what you are, now we are just negotiating the price.”

I guess the only question left to me is – will the old traditional main-steam media organs – the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, the alphabet TV networks, and all the rest – cleave unto the One, the Obama-messiah like the villains of Joel Chandler Harris’s animals tales got stuck unto the Tar Baby, and go down with him, all together, squealing in protest. And if that comes up appearing like some sort of racist imagery? Well, I thought it was pretty apt, and if you think using it in this sense would be racist … well, then … bite me. I’m kinda tired of having the racist card played, in regard to The One, anyway. Tired of having to defend myself, explain myself, make excuses for people who, once upon a time and back in the day, happened to be of the same pallor of skin that I am. Done with that all – Barack Obama is a commonplace Chicago political thug only with nicer manners and a better tailor. He has zip skills, a thin resume and a whole lot of embarrassing friends and associations, and I sussed that all out by the time be became the Democrat Party Chosen one. Now, I’d love to get a nice assured stream of income, based on that bit of forecasting, but I’d have to share it with about all the other mainstream and centrist, Constitutionalist-cum-Libertarian blogosphere commentariat