Saturday, September 03, 2011

Obamacomedy!

I’ve read that the TV sitcom Seinfeld is among the best viewing in TV offerings, probably even in reruns, assuming that one can make it through the requisite number of commercials. I daresay it’s won many awards, although I’ve never seen a Seinfeld episode. I can remember seeing snippets when searching for something else, which probably explains why I never tuned it in on purpose. In another life, I withstood the commercials to watch stuff like Gunsmoke or Bonanza, but being bored stiff by sometimes off-color sophomoric humor is not my thing.

All that to say this…the best entertainment currently is found by just watching or reading the news in the media. Comedy pervades the nation’s capital these days and simply taking note of the antics of elected officials and bureaucrats is enough to induce hilarity. Even though the news is important, the purveyors of it these days, especially on the distaff side, consider it as entertainment and dress for it, showing as much cleavage, thigh, off-the-shoulder frocks and that which must be most constantly monitored (or not) by the crossed-legs-toward-the-camera position.

Reporting an ax murder or the wipeout of a platoon in a skimpy cocktail dress and sporting blue eyelids seems somehow incongruous, but the show must go on. Meanwhile, the mentally-challenged newsmen are dressed to the nines from neck to toe as if on their way to a funeral. The double-standard is never more obvious than it is among the news anchors. A guy dressed like Walter Cronkite seems believable, while a gal emulating Gypsy Rose Lee seems more recognizable on a street-corner, no matter the subject of the news.

But I digress! The Keystone Kops could not have caused greater laughter lately than that cooked up by the pooh-bahs. POTUS is in full campaign mode and made a three-day “listening tour” through Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois (actually only about 380 miles) the other week, transmogrifying the term “listening tour” into “official business,” thus financed by the taxpayers with a huge saving to his war chest. He needed a couple buses at $1.1 million each under which he had thrown no one, like the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, meaning that they had to be new and un-bottomed. They were made in Canada, since nothing bearing the “Made In America” tag could be trusted. The taxpayers are still laughing/weeping at this joke. Great entertainment!

After tirelessly listening nearly 400-miles-worth over three days, POTUS needed a vacation, lest PTSD accruing to bus-fatigue (trauma worth a Purple Heart) impair his readiness as C-in-C for a three a.m. emergency call, so it was off to rough it at Martha’s Vineyard. Apparently, he and the First Lady went on “his” and “her” Air Force planes to MV, since flying to blue-collar Peoria to pick up POTUS would be somewhat demeaning for FLOTUS, a world traveler. The unwashed in the boonies are still laughing at such sacrifice, something POTUS has called for regularly. After all, POTUS and FLOTUS used only three Air Force planes for their famous Big Apple “date.”

Even better comedy was in store concerning the PROCLAMATION by POTUS that he would do a second state-of-the-union address to Congress on 07 September, labeled a “Jobs (three letter word according to Biden) Speech.” House Speaker Boehner was not consulted…a trifle. The date was obviously set because the republicans were doing a debate on that evening – this time sponsored by MSNBC – but POTUS had forgotten that MSNBC is his main propaganda arm and felt commercially threatened. The rumor was that Chris Matthews had a seizure nearly equal to the leg-tingling that renders him immobile during any POTUS speech.

What is a POTUS to do in such a predicament, besides stamping his feet or beating on the floor? To insist on the seventh is to be like a commander-in-chief, except that Speaker Boehner, who owns the house reservation service, is not in the military…but posed a compromise – change it to the eighth. What a brilliant nice non-partisan idea! POTUS/C-in-C accepted – all in the spirit of goodwill – but probably remembering that Boehner never salutes.

The Law of Unintended Consequences struck at this point, to wit, that Green Bay plays New Orleans on the eighth at the same time – easily attracting millions more than a POTUS speech, with or without teleprompter full of entertaining (maybe even – gasp – off-color) witticisms/jokes/whatever. Actually – unkind to so say – the speech itself will probably be a joke, like Seinfeld, a rerun. Not to worry…brilliant minds at work – contact the teams and tell them to change the game…the C-in-C speaks. However, Packers and Saints also don’t salute, so POTUS, ever the knowledgeable fan, will go off early and have the perfect excuse for no time-killing processionals, handshakes, backslaps, ovations, amens and hallelujahs. He could’ve tried Friday night but that’s high-school-football-night, a no-brainer.

There’s nothing more entertaining than comedic politics, occasioned by foolishness conceived accidentally. Nobody could make this stuff up. Nobody could write a script so completely trivializing a POTUS address to Congress.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

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