Sunday, April 13, 2008

C & O - Faux Pas & Lies?

Recently, Bill Clinton stepped forward to say that his wife's totally fabricated remarks about being caught in a sniper attack in Afghanistan were simply the result of late-night tiredness as speech-sabotage, though one finds it hard to understand how she could make up a yarn like that outside of being on LSD. Timothy Leary, the psychedelic guru of the last century might have come up with something like that while on a "trip" to La-La-Land via the ecstasy drug, but a hard day at the campaigning is not likely to make one hallucinate enough to make up a yarn like Hillary's. Nor does it make her campaign-ad affirmation that she could handle any problem at three a.m., no matter how serious, seem other than hilariousl.

Actually, she practiced that bit of melodrama in other speeches not delivered at night and only discovered her "misspeak" after films were produced that showed her Afghanistan "sniper-attack" to be led by about an eight-year-old sniper of the female persuasion backed up by the president of Bosnia and a welcoming committee whose members did not seem unduly alarmed by the snipers firing at the senator and her daughter Chelsea. Maybe she thought that if she told that lie often enough it would take root.

"And it's not surprising then they [small-town people] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration." Naw…Hillary didn't say that, so she doesn't need for Bill to launch into an explanation about the dangers of late-night oratory. In fact, on the basis of the Bill Clinton Syndrome (lie as knee-jerk reaction when in doubt), she should tell the big lummox to boogie off the campaign trail and stop exemplifying what another Clinton White House would be like.

Actually, Barack Obama delivered that bit of wisdom at a fund-raiser in California (where else), probably never dreaming that anybody would tell since it was a closed-door affair – translated as only well-heeled Hollywood-types with cranial vacuums welcome. This sorta rules out the small-towners. One supposes that Michelle Obama will now come forward and do what any good candidate's spouse would do – use the spin cycle to expunge an insult from a remark.

In the process, she can reiterate her profound "pride in this country" as actuated – finally – in her adulthood by the prospects of an Obama White House, where she can be the "reigning Hillary." In South Carolina (lots of black voters there), Ms Obama said this country is "downright mean," has "gotten worse over my lifetime," and "I'm young. Forty-four." Since those first three gems of wisdom might be expected from a high school sophomore, she probably told her age to prove that she actually is in her adulthood instead of in the junior varsity cheerleading squad figuring the best ways to flash her navel at the boys.

It's the middle-class folks who live in those little towns, the very same folks Obama says he will turn into instant – if not millionaires – at least folks who will all own their own houses, maybe a car for each occupant 16 or older and a job always quadrupling minimum wage, no matter how high it gets. He and Clinton are wailing with consistency about the government's ignoring of the middle-class (where the most votes are) and blaming those folks (like them) who make "big money" for all the troubles in the world…even global warming that Al Gore has said will end the Polar Bear forever.

It's hard to know what Obama meant by middle-class folks (or at least small-town folks, however he categorizes them) clinging to their guns. He said those folks are bitter, so does he believe that being bitter entitles a bitter person to take up arms and go looking for the characters who made them bitter, with a bit of revenge on their minds? Or did he mean that they're clinging to their guns so no one or no institution can snatch them away (that 2nd Amendment thing)? As was the case in the old radio show of yesteryear, "Only the shadow knows." Now, it probably would be, "Only the spin will show." Sounds like great television, actually. It could be called the "Far-out Wing," something like the "West Wing" with spinmeisters always at the ready.

Clinging to religion? In light of the furor generated by Obama's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright (God Damn America), why would Obama even mention religion? Of course, mentioning it in California is safe enough, but didn't he know that someone would tattle to a buddy in Iowa? Jeremiah might be big stuff to the "closed door" crowd, but, as Jeremiah himself might put it in the most sophisticated ebonics, he ain't nothin' nohow to the mistreated middle-class but just another Uncle Tom.

Ah…those clinging-vine middle-class leeches hanging on to "antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration!" Okay, just days after he delivers what the liberals consider the greatest speech since M.L. King's "I Have a Dream" oration in 1968, also a "Rodney King Can't We All Get Along" speech, Obama accuses the small-towners of antipathy, defined as "settled aversion or dislike," to people. What people? He didn't say. He just said those clingers to guns and religion don't like other people, and that sounds ominous. Maybe he thinks the Klan is still in Pennsylvania, religious antipathies, armed and dangerous.

Obviously, both Clintons and both Obamas suffer that mechanical mental malaise sometimes called the "failure to get their brains in gear before letting out the clutch on their tongues." On the basis of these outright lies and/or total lapses in judgment, one shudders to think that either democrat candidate could actually accede to the White House. Of course, a revving tongue might be better than a brain that's stripped a gear.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

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