by Burt Prelutsky
The other day I was asked if I thought I would ever come face to face with writer’s block. I had to laugh. Inasmuch as I generally write about things that annoy, frustrate or just plain drive me nuts, running out of material or losing the impulse to complain in print are among the very least of my worries.
When you factor in that Barack Obama is my president, Joe Biden is my vice-president, Nancy Pelosi is next in line, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are my senators, Brad Sherman is my congressman, Antonio Villaraigosa is my mayor and Jerry Brown is lurking in the wings to be my governor, do you really think I’ll be turning my pen into a plowshare anytime soon?
But at least now you might have a better handle on why I look back so fondly on what I have come to regard as the good old days when an American’s major complaint was that he had taxation without representation.
On top of everything else, I live in Los Angeles and have spent most of my adult life laboring in Hollywood, a place that some people regard as less an actual location than a state of mind. I agree it is a state of mind in the same sense that paranoia and schizophrenia are states of mind.
After working in the field of entertainment for about 40 years, I swear to you that there are a fair number of normal, decent human beings who work in the industry. But truth compels me to say that the lower you go in the pecking order, the likelier you are to find them. That’s not to say that every producer, actor, director and writer, is an arrogant, leftwing, coke-snorting, bottom-feeding egomaniac, but that’s certainly the way to bet.
Sometimes, when I’m daydreaming about what Hell must be like, I envision a place where every day you wake up and have to go work for someone like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, nasty sourpusses who think that their every whim should be immediately pandered to and who regard themselves as God, but with a bigger expense account, a larger staff and a better pension plan.
In short, Pelosi, Frank and Reid and their congressional cronies, could find true happiness working at a TV network, a movie studio or a theatrical agency. Perhaps you think I’m making this up, but I’m not. Liberal politicians are doing their best to shove Obamacare down our throats, pretending it’s manna from Heaven, but you may have noticed that they haven’t the slightest intention of leaving their own medical care up to a lottery system. And can you really blame them? Do you think Pelosi wants a bunch of strangers deciding if she can get another dozen face lifts? You think Robert Byrd wants to leave it up to a death panel to determine if it’s time to put the old Ku Kluxer on an ice floe?
You could call them hypocrites, but I call them Hollywood hopefuls. They’d fit right in. This is the town, after all, where people are still whining over the fact that a handful of mediocre actors and hack writers were blacklisted 60 years ago because they were, for the most part, unrepentant Communists whose allegiance was to the evil Soviet Union. But these same people think nothing of blacklisting writers and directors who have done nothing worse than made the fatal mistake of turning 50.
Many years ago, radio wit Fred Allen observed that “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, stick it in the navel of a flea, and still have room left over for two caraway seeds and an agent’s heart.” I say he was being too kind. Although I regard myself as basically a loyal person, I’ve had about two dozen agents in my life. What’s more, in what was a moderately successful TV writing career, by getting my own jobs, I made money for all of them, except the last one. Which was just as well because she’s the one who went to the slammer for stealing her clients’ money.
The reason, by the way, I kept leaving agents wasn’t simply because none of them ever earned his or her 10%, but because eventually they all lied to me about what they would do for me or, worse yet, what they had already done.
In my experience, agents are people who like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them. Those are the male agents, of course. Female agents, on the other hand, like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them.
In other words, if a genie somehow managed to switch everyone in Hollywood with everyone in Congress, you would barely notice it. In fact, aside from the fact that the paparazzi would all have to pack up and move east and that “Henry Waxman: The Musical!” would finally be green-lighted at Universal, life would go on as usual.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Calling All Zombies
by Burt Prelutsky
For the longest time, I wondered why there always seemed to be such a large audience for those stupid and disgusting movies about zombies. But after seeing how many people lined up in support of Obamacare, I realized it was because so many of us, in and out of Congress, had good reason to totally identify with the undead. Like those lurching creatures in the movies, they, too, desperately require brains, but not to satisfy their insatiable hunger, but simply in order to think clearly.
I never had much regard for Sen. Lieberman, who, except for his support of Israel, might just as well hand over his proxy vote to Harry Reid and stay home in his bathrobe and watch TV soap operas. In spite of insisting that he’s opposed to the health care bill, he supplied Obama with the 60th vote he needed in order to bring Castrocare to America. Lieberman, who would like to see his party affiliation designated as an (ID) for Independent Democrat, should realize that ID in his case stands for Idiot.
In fact, all of Congress should come with a warning label reading: Hazardous to America’s Health.
I have been asked if I planned to support Sarah Palin in 2012, and I replied that I would if she got the nomination. Heck, why wouldn’t I? I supported John McCain in 2008, didn’t I? I wouldn’t have the slightest objection to voting for a woman president, but why would I favor Palin over Rep. Michele Bachmann, who, instead of peddling books and trying to prove that she’s not as dumb as those weasels, Charles Gibson and Katie Couric, made her look, is actually doing everything she can to derail Obama’s agenda in Congress.
Because the House and Senate are such constant sources of embarrassment, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there’s a conclave based in America that’s even worse. I refer to that gathering of knaves, thugs and parasites, who congregate in New York. If you guessed the editorial board of the NY Times, you’re close, but no cigar. Actually, I refer to the United Nations.
If you are one of those dunderheads who actually believes that the U.N.-- with such prominent members as Russia, China, Iran, Egypt, North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Cuba, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- is a force for good, you really should seek professional help. I’d be willing to wager that at least half the people who are currently residing in asylums aren’t as completely divorced from reality as you are.
In typical fashion, a committee of the U.N. General Assembly recently passed the following resolution on the so-called defamation of religion: “Everyone has the right to hold opinion without interference, and has the right to freedom of expression, the exercising of which carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations.” So everyone has the right to his own opinion and the freedom to express it, unless, of course, they take advantage of those rights.
Or, in other words, knowing, as we do, how little the member states care for Christianity or Judaism, don’t dare utter an unkind word about Islam. Or else.
Just like those who trumpet the grandeur of the U.N., I, too, can see the benefits of a one-world government. The thing is, they want to see it established here on earth and I want to see it limited to Mars.
Finally, I recently identified what it is that separates politicians and diplomats on the one hand and dogs and cats on the other. It’s simply that, unlike those utterly useless people, our pets don’t break our hearts until they die.
For the longest time, I wondered why there always seemed to be such a large audience for those stupid and disgusting movies about zombies. But after seeing how many people lined up in support of Obamacare, I realized it was because so many of us, in and out of Congress, had good reason to totally identify with the undead. Like those lurching creatures in the movies, they, too, desperately require brains, but not to satisfy their insatiable hunger, but simply in order to think clearly.
I never had much regard for Sen. Lieberman, who, except for his support of Israel, might just as well hand over his proxy vote to Harry Reid and stay home in his bathrobe and watch TV soap operas. In spite of insisting that he’s opposed to the health care bill, he supplied Obama with the 60th vote he needed in order to bring Castrocare to America. Lieberman, who would like to see his party affiliation designated as an (ID) for Independent Democrat, should realize that ID in his case stands for Idiot.
In fact, all of Congress should come with a warning label reading: Hazardous to America’s Health.
I have been asked if I planned to support Sarah Palin in 2012, and I replied that I would if she got the nomination. Heck, why wouldn’t I? I supported John McCain in 2008, didn’t I? I wouldn’t have the slightest objection to voting for a woman president, but why would I favor Palin over Rep. Michele Bachmann, who, instead of peddling books and trying to prove that she’s not as dumb as those weasels, Charles Gibson and Katie Couric, made her look, is actually doing everything she can to derail Obama’s agenda in Congress.
Because the House and Senate are such constant sources of embarrassment, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there’s a conclave based in America that’s even worse. I refer to that gathering of knaves, thugs and parasites, who congregate in New York. If you guessed the editorial board of the NY Times, you’re close, but no cigar. Actually, I refer to the United Nations.
If you are one of those dunderheads who actually believes that the U.N.-- with such prominent members as Russia, China, Iran, Egypt, North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Cuba, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- is a force for good, you really should seek professional help. I’d be willing to wager that at least half the people who are currently residing in asylums aren’t as completely divorced from reality as you are.
In typical fashion, a committee of the U.N. General Assembly recently passed the following resolution on the so-called defamation of religion: “Everyone has the right to hold opinion without interference, and has the right to freedom of expression, the exercising of which carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations.” So everyone has the right to his own opinion and the freedom to express it, unless, of course, they take advantage of those rights.
Or, in other words, knowing, as we do, how little the member states care for Christianity or Judaism, don’t dare utter an unkind word about Islam. Or else.
Just like those who trumpet the grandeur of the U.N., I, too, can see the benefits of a one-world government. The thing is, they want to see it established here on earth and I want to see it limited to Mars.
Finally, I recently identified what it is that separates politicians and diplomats on the one hand and dogs and cats on the other. It’s simply that, unlike those utterly useless people, our pets don’t break our hearts until they die.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Liberal Lies And Conservative Truths
by Burt Prelutsky
These days, as we see Obama’s approval rating plummeting in the polls and we hear more and more people expressing buyer’s remorse, it occurs to me that the only two areas of advertising in which blatant lies are permitted are movies and politics. And I, for one, would like to know why we can get our money back if we buy a toaster that burns the pumpernickel, but not if we’re tricked into seeing a Will Ferrell movie the ads insisted was a laugh riot. And why is it we’re not allowed a do-over if it turns out we voted for a devout Marxist only because he swore he was a centrist during the campaign?
Next, I’d like to know why when congressmen swear to uphold and defend the Constitution, which still included the 1st and 2nd amendment the last time I looked, Rep. Henry Waxman gets to say, “If someone is so fearful that they’re going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all.” If I recall correctly, that’s the same thing that King George III said back around 1775. It seems that the King, who was nicknamed Mad George, was only intermittently out of his gourd, according to his contemporaries. But even on his worst days, it’s unlikely that he, unlike Mad Henry, would have voted to continue funding ACORN.
Sometimes I give myself a headache trying to figure out why so-called intellectuals -- those in the obsequious media and academia -- are so bloody anxious to give a giant shout-out to such idiocies as cap & trade, 12 trillion dollar deficits and Castrocare -- policies guaranteed to bankrupt America, programs that wouldn’t redistribute wealth, but would merely guarantee poverty. Why, I ask myself, would anyone want to emulate England and Canada, where you have to enter a lottery in order to get dibs on a doctor and wait months, sometimes years, for an operation?
The only reason I can come up with is that these eggheads believe that only by radically shaking up the status quo will they obtain the power and prestige they crave so desperately. Even if the end result is a dictatorship, they’re okay with it so long as they wind up in the inner circle.
Oddly enough, although they love to parrot Santayana’s line about those who don’t learn from history being doomed to repeat it, it’s they who were obviously dozing off in class when they should have been taking notes. The fact is, as history tells us, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro, all treated their useful idiots -- I mean their intellectuals -- the exact same way; namely, as compost.
Yet another obnoxious thing about elitists is the way they go on about the wonders of diversity. But of course the only diversity they ever champion is the one defined by pigmentation. When it comes to diversity of opinion, they all become as censorious as Puritans. Let a conservative try to speak on a college campus and he’ll be shouted down. Let a conservative speak his mind on the radio, TV or Internet, and the president makes threatening noises about shutting them down.
Recently, we were told one of the biggest lies of all. We were told by the New York Times, the U.S. military and Barack Obama, that Major Hasan had simply cracked up. We were told he was suffering from the very first case of pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. We were even told that he killed 13 soldiers and an unborn baby and wounded 30 other people because he had at one time or another been teased.
What we weren’t told, because it might embarrass Muslims, is that Major Hasan was a devout Islamic. On the other hand, if Hasan had been a devout Christian who had hollered “Christ is great!” as he went on his slaughter spree, why do I doubt that the N.Y. Times, General Casey and Barack Obama, would be trying to bury the truth under a truckload of politically correct manure?
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of our leaders trying to convince us that we’re not engaged in a religious war. There is a reason that in the wake of 9/11, we didn’t immediately bomb Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen or Syria. Oil aside, we didn’t bomb them because the U.S. wasn’t attacked by any one country, as we had been when Japan leveled Pearl Harbor. This time, the sneak attack was perpetrated by a religion. It was the same vile religion that took hostages in 1979, that bombed our embassies and our Marine base, that blew a hole in the USS Cole, and that first tried to bring down the Twin Towers, in 1993.
And because it’s a religious war, a jihad, I don’t understand why neither we nor Israel fights it in the appropriate fashion. Why is it that our military doesn’t dip its bullets and bombs in pig blood and why doesn’t Israel announce that the remains of suicide bombers will henceforth be buried in pigskins?
It’s hard to imagine that even after 61 years of constant attacks and threats of extinction, Israel still insists on taking prisoners. Eventually, when Israel has jailed enough of these vermin, the enemy kidnaps, tortures and murders, an Israeli soldier, and then swaps his corpse for a hundred or two hundred terrorists.
I suspect that liberals will find my suggestions not only insensitive, but downright repulsive. Leave it to a liberal to be more deeply offended by the spilling of a pig’s blood than that of a human.
It just seems to me that if you have kryptonite, you’re a schmuck if you don’t use it.
These days, as we see Obama’s approval rating plummeting in the polls and we hear more and more people expressing buyer’s remorse, it occurs to me that the only two areas of advertising in which blatant lies are permitted are movies and politics. And I, for one, would like to know why we can get our money back if we buy a toaster that burns the pumpernickel, but not if we’re tricked into seeing a Will Ferrell movie the ads insisted was a laugh riot. And why is it we’re not allowed a do-over if it turns out we voted for a devout Marxist only because he swore he was a centrist during the campaign?
Next, I’d like to know why when congressmen swear to uphold and defend the Constitution, which still included the 1st and 2nd amendment the last time I looked, Rep. Henry Waxman gets to say, “If someone is so fearful that they’re going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all.” If I recall correctly, that’s the same thing that King George III said back around 1775. It seems that the King, who was nicknamed Mad George, was only intermittently out of his gourd, according to his contemporaries. But even on his worst days, it’s unlikely that he, unlike Mad Henry, would have voted to continue funding ACORN.
Sometimes I give myself a headache trying to figure out why so-called intellectuals -- those in the obsequious media and academia -- are so bloody anxious to give a giant shout-out to such idiocies as cap & trade, 12 trillion dollar deficits and Castrocare -- policies guaranteed to bankrupt America, programs that wouldn’t redistribute wealth, but would merely guarantee poverty. Why, I ask myself, would anyone want to emulate England and Canada, where you have to enter a lottery in order to get dibs on a doctor and wait months, sometimes years, for an operation?
The only reason I can come up with is that these eggheads believe that only by radically shaking up the status quo will they obtain the power and prestige they crave so desperately. Even if the end result is a dictatorship, they’re okay with it so long as they wind up in the inner circle.
Oddly enough, although they love to parrot Santayana’s line about those who don’t learn from history being doomed to repeat it, it’s they who were obviously dozing off in class when they should have been taking notes. The fact is, as history tells us, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro, all treated their useful idiots -- I mean their intellectuals -- the exact same way; namely, as compost.
Yet another obnoxious thing about elitists is the way they go on about the wonders of diversity. But of course the only diversity they ever champion is the one defined by pigmentation. When it comes to diversity of opinion, they all become as censorious as Puritans. Let a conservative try to speak on a college campus and he’ll be shouted down. Let a conservative speak his mind on the radio, TV or Internet, and the president makes threatening noises about shutting them down.
Recently, we were told one of the biggest lies of all. We were told by the New York Times, the U.S. military and Barack Obama, that Major Hasan had simply cracked up. We were told he was suffering from the very first case of pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. We were even told that he killed 13 soldiers and an unborn baby and wounded 30 other people because he had at one time or another been teased.
What we weren’t told, because it might embarrass Muslims, is that Major Hasan was a devout Islamic. On the other hand, if Hasan had been a devout Christian who had hollered “Christ is great!” as he went on his slaughter spree, why do I doubt that the N.Y. Times, General Casey and Barack Obama, would be trying to bury the truth under a truckload of politically correct manure?
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of our leaders trying to convince us that we’re not engaged in a religious war. There is a reason that in the wake of 9/11, we didn’t immediately bomb Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen or Syria. Oil aside, we didn’t bomb them because the U.S. wasn’t attacked by any one country, as we had been when Japan leveled Pearl Harbor. This time, the sneak attack was perpetrated by a religion. It was the same vile religion that took hostages in 1979, that bombed our embassies and our Marine base, that blew a hole in the USS Cole, and that first tried to bring down the Twin Towers, in 1993.
And because it’s a religious war, a jihad, I don’t understand why neither we nor Israel fights it in the appropriate fashion. Why is it that our military doesn’t dip its bullets and bombs in pig blood and why doesn’t Israel announce that the remains of suicide bombers will henceforth be buried in pigskins?
It’s hard to imagine that even after 61 years of constant attacks and threats of extinction, Israel still insists on taking prisoners. Eventually, when Israel has jailed enough of these vermin, the enemy kidnaps, tortures and murders, an Israeli soldier, and then swaps his corpse for a hundred or two hundred terrorists.
I suspect that liberals will find my suggestions not only insensitive, but downright repulsive. Leave it to a liberal to be more deeply offended by the spilling of a pig’s blood than that of a human.
It just seems to me that if you have kryptonite, you’re a schmuck if you don’t use it.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The New And Improved Iron Curtain
by Burt Prelutsky
Back in 1946, Winston Churchill, in a speech delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, referred to an Iron Curtain that had descended across the Continent, behind which all the capitols of the ancient states, from Berlin to Belgrade, from Budapest to Sofia, were under the boot of the Soviet Union.
Today, freedom-loving people are faced with a second such curtain. It doesn’t exist in Eastern Europe this time, but along the Potomac. On one side, there are despots like Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Waxman, Sunstein, Emanuel, Axelrod, Specter and Conyers. On the other side are those of us who are sick and tired of having ex-community organizers and their left-wing henchmen doing their best to enslave us. They treat the Constitution like toilet paper; they bribe millions of us, including illegal aliens, with cash and free health benefits, while simultaneously bankrupting the rest of us, along with our kids and their kids.
They have saddled us with so much debt, unemployment and inevitable inflation, one can only assume it’s their plan that we’ll be too wretched to notice that they’re also taking away our rights and freedom. This is the doing of the same people who pretended that the Patriot Act, which did nothing more than try to prevent Islamic terrorists from plotting a sequel to 9/11, was the height of fascistic tyranny.
I guarantee that if our leading leftists were characters in a movie, a lot more people would be able to recognize their villainy. That’s because they would all look like albinos and talk with funny accents.
For instance, the secret ballot has been sacrosanct ever since our nation was founded. However, we find the current administration pushing for card check, which would deprive American workers of that basic safeguard when it comes to union elections. The purpose is obvious. The goons in the SEIU and the UAW want to know whom to intimidate, whose kneecaps to bust. And Obama, whose campaign coffers benefited to the tune of at least $100 million in union dues, is only too happy to return the favor.
The truth is, most people are so easily cowed and so unwilling to deal with confrontation that if it weren’t for the secret ballot, something as utterly absurd as same-sex marriage and as immoral as abortion without parental notification for 14-year-olds would probably be legal in all 50 states.
In the first 10 months of Obama’s presidency, Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, paid 22 visits to the White House. It sort of reminds you of the old days when only Monica Lewinsky had such easy access to the president. These days, with Stern running in and out, you can’t help wondering who’s servicing whom in the Oval Office.
One of the worst things about the House passing Obamacare was having to put up with Nancy Pelosi’s patting her own back and gloating, in spite of 39 desperate Democrats who broke ranks in the hope of hanging on to their seats in 2010.
Speaking of Pelosi, considering that it’s been a very long time since the Speaker was able to blink her eyes or to look anything but startled, do you think her plastic surgeon ever tells potential clients that he’s the schlemiel who did the job?
Frankly, I don’t know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I’m not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we’re number one. There’s no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on “Macbeth”.
The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of speech. You don’t know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.
Back in 1946, Winston Churchill, in a speech delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, referred to an Iron Curtain that had descended across the Continent, behind which all the capitols of the ancient states, from Berlin to Belgrade, from Budapest to Sofia, were under the boot of the Soviet Union.
Today, freedom-loving people are faced with a second such curtain. It doesn’t exist in Eastern Europe this time, but along the Potomac. On one side, there are despots like Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Waxman, Sunstein, Emanuel, Axelrod, Specter and Conyers. On the other side are those of us who are sick and tired of having ex-community organizers and their left-wing henchmen doing their best to enslave us. They treat the Constitution like toilet paper; they bribe millions of us, including illegal aliens, with cash and free health benefits, while simultaneously bankrupting the rest of us, along with our kids and their kids.
They have saddled us with so much debt, unemployment and inevitable inflation, one can only assume it’s their plan that we’ll be too wretched to notice that they’re also taking away our rights and freedom. This is the doing of the same people who pretended that the Patriot Act, which did nothing more than try to prevent Islamic terrorists from plotting a sequel to 9/11, was the height of fascistic tyranny.
I guarantee that if our leading leftists were characters in a movie, a lot more people would be able to recognize their villainy. That’s because they would all look like albinos and talk with funny accents.
For instance, the secret ballot has been sacrosanct ever since our nation was founded. However, we find the current administration pushing for card check, which would deprive American workers of that basic safeguard when it comes to union elections. The purpose is obvious. The goons in the SEIU and the UAW want to know whom to intimidate, whose kneecaps to bust. And Obama, whose campaign coffers benefited to the tune of at least $100 million in union dues, is only too happy to return the favor.
The truth is, most people are so easily cowed and so unwilling to deal with confrontation that if it weren’t for the secret ballot, something as utterly absurd as same-sex marriage and as immoral as abortion without parental notification for 14-year-olds would probably be legal in all 50 states.
In the first 10 months of Obama’s presidency, Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, paid 22 visits to the White House. It sort of reminds you of the old days when only Monica Lewinsky had such easy access to the president. These days, with Stern running in and out, you can’t help wondering who’s servicing whom in the Oval Office.
One of the worst things about the House passing Obamacare was having to put up with Nancy Pelosi’s patting her own back and gloating, in spite of 39 desperate Democrats who broke ranks in the hope of hanging on to their seats in 2010.
Speaking of Pelosi, considering that it’s been a very long time since the Speaker was able to blink her eyes or to look anything but startled, do you think her plastic surgeon ever tells potential clients that he’s the schlemiel who did the job?
Frankly, I don’t know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I’m not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we’re number one. There’s no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on “Macbeth”.
The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of speech. You don’t know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Fox And Foes
by Burt Prelutsky
Whenever I hear people outside the administration prattle on about how evil and biased Fox News is, I know I am listening to a flock of parrots who have never even tuned in. As a conservative, I, myself, have a number of problems with the network. For one thing, I resent Bill O’Reilly’s ridiculing those who merely ask for documentation that their president was born in the United States, and I also wish he’d stop defending Obama against charges that he’s a Socialist or worse. If it walks, swims and quacks like a duck, Bill, it’s a safe bet that you can pop it in the oven and serve it at Christmastime.
I’d also appreciate it if Sean Hannity would wake up to the fact that a lot of us change the channel the second that Bob Beckel shows up on the not so Great American Panel.
On the other hand, I wish that merely as an experiment a dozen or so liberals could be forced to watch Glenn Beck for an entire week. I would be dying to know how they would react, what they would say, after watching videos of Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn, Andy Stern and John Holdren, spouting off when they think nobody outside the room will hear about their plans to transform America in ways that would have made Dr. Frankenstein blanch, but put a smile on Karl Marx’s ugly mug.
Back in 1990, the police raided Barney Frank’s home because his gay lover, Steve Gobie, was running a male prostitution ring out of his condo. In 2007, the police raided the home of James Ready and arrested him for possession of marijuana. Ready, who is Barney’s main squeeze these days, didn’t just smoke the weed, Farmer Ready was growing the stuff. The congressman was there at the time of the raid, but denied he had any idea that those plants in the backyard weren’t rhododendrons. I believe he told the police that he was perfectly clueless when it came to plant life. I guess, like Clinton, he never inhaled, either.
Because I am always prepared to grant a liberal politician the benefit of the doubt, I’m sure it’s only a coincidence that Barney has long led the fight to decriminalize the use and sale of the narcotic.
On the other hand, considering his sorry track record when it comes to romance, don’t you think it’s high time that Rep. Frank, who’ll be 70 years old in a few months, should start using a reputable dating service and stop phoning every number he finds scrawled on bathroom walls?
Finally, I understand why so many folks are eager to impeach the president. But that obviously isn’t going to happen. Unfortunately, being a Red and despising America isn’t an impeachable offense. However, there’s nothing to prevent people from gathering signatures in order to recall their arrogant representatives.
I suggest we begin with every single one of those ACORN-loving crumbs who voted for the stimulus bill, cash for clunkers and Obamacare.
If their voting against the best interests of present-day American taxpayers, not to mention future generations, isn’t reason enough to throw the bums out, I can’t imagine what would be.
As with the weather, or at least the way it used to be with the weather prior to Al Gore’s turning it into his personal ATM, everyone complains about incumbents, but nobody does anything about them.
Whenever I hear people outside the administration prattle on about how evil and biased Fox News is, I know I am listening to a flock of parrots who have never even tuned in. As a conservative, I, myself, have a number of problems with the network. For one thing, I resent Bill O’Reilly’s ridiculing those who merely ask for documentation that their president was born in the United States, and I also wish he’d stop defending Obama against charges that he’s a Socialist or worse. If it walks, swims and quacks like a duck, Bill, it’s a safe bet that you can pop it in the oven and serve it at Christmastime.
I’d also appreciate it if Sean Hannity would wake up to the fact that a lot of us change the channel the second that Bob Beckel shows up on the not so Great American Panel.
On the other hand, I wish that merely as an experiment a dozen or so liberals could be forced to watch Glenn Beck for an entire week. I would be dying to know how they would react, what they would say, after watching videos of Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn, Andy Stern and John Holdren, spouting off when they think nobody outside the room will hear about their plans to transform America in ways that would have made Dr. Frankenstein blanch, but put a smile on Karl Marx’s ugly mug.
Back in 1990, the police raided Barney Frank’s home because his gay lover, Steve Gobie, was running a male prostitution ring out of his condo. In 2007, the police raided the home of James Ready and arrested him for possession of marijuana. Ready, who is Barney’s main squeeze these days, didn’t just smoke the weed, Farmer Ready was growing the stuff. The congressman was there at the time of the raid, but denied he had any idea that those plants in the backyard weren’t rhododendrons. I believe he told the police that he was perfectly clueless when it came to plant life. I guess, like Clinton, he never inhaled, either.
Because I am always prepared to grant a liberal politician the benefit of the doubt, I’m sure it’s only a coincidence that Barney has long led the fight to decriminalize the use and sale of the narcotic.
On the other hand, considering his sorry track record when it comes to romance, don’t you think it’s high time that Rep. Frank, who’ll be 70 years old in a few months, should start using a reputable dating service and stop phoning every number he finds scrawled on bathroom walls?
Finally, I understand why so many folks are eager to impeach the president. But that obviously isn’t going to happen. Unfortunately, being a Red and despising America isn’t an impeachable offense. However, there’s nothing to prevent people from gathering signatures in order to recall their arrogant representatives.
I suggest we begin with every single one of those ACORN-loving crumbs who voted for the stimulus bill, cash for clunkers and Obamacare.
If their voting against the best interests of present-day American taxpayers, not to mention future generations, isn’t reason enough to throw the bums out, I can’t imagine what would be.
As with the weather, or at least the way it used to be with the weather prior to Al Gore’s turning it into his personal ATM, everyone complains about incumbents, but nobody does anything about them.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Clearing The Decks
by Burt Prelutsky
Periodically, I find that my random thoughts begin to pile up and threaten to overflow from the dusty attic I call my brain. At such times, I have to decide whether to wrap them up and pass them off as gifts or place them curbside for the trash collectors. Inasmuch as we are fast-approaching Christmas season, try to consider the following remarks with the same equanimity you do those holiday fruitcakes that keep showing up on your doorstep year after year.
To begin with, could somebody please explain why they keep churning out one version of “The Christmas Carol” after another? Now, I have nothing against Charles Dickens’ little fable and, in fact, back in the third grade I portrayed Tiny Tim in a class production that is still spoken of in hushed tones. But isn’t enough ever enough? This December, Jim Carrey is taking a crack at Ebenezer Scrooge. The question is why. In the years since the 1914 silent film starring Charles Rock, there have been over 50 versions produced for either TV or the movies. Six Oscar winners -- Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Fredric March, Walter Matthau, Jack Palance and George C. Scott -- have bah-humbugged their way through the part, and another four Oscar nominees -- John Carradine, Basil Rathbone, James Whitmore and Sir Ralph Richardson -- have given it a go, while a fifth, James Earl Jones, had to settle for merely narrating a version.
Next on the agenda is the recent election in New York’s 23rd congressional district. That was the race in which ACORN’s favorite “Republican,” Dierdre Scozzafava, dropped out at the last minute, throwing her support to the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, who managed to defeat Doug Hoffman, a conservative candidate with the personality and verbal skills of a guppy, by a scant three percent. Interestingly, nearly six percent of the goofballs in upper state New York trooped out and cast their votes for non-candidate Scozzafava. Which strongly suggests that when Mr. Owens goes to Washington, he should rent, not buy.
In the wake of GOP gubernatorial victories that same day in Virginia and New Jersey, Nancy Pelosi bragged that Owens had won in a district that had elected one Republican after another ever since the Civil War. As usual, she lied. Although the area has been gerrymandered any number of times over the years, Republicans haven’t been elected with any regularity even since the Vietnam War. In fact, 11 of the past 15 representatives from the district have been Democrats!
Speaking of House Speaker Pelosi, do you think she would be quite so determined to shove Obamacare down our throats if members of Congress had to live under the same system as the rest of us? Do you think for even one minute that she would agree to a health care plan that rationed plastic surgery?
For that matter, can you imagine Obama’s Hollywood groupies supporting cap and trade if it meant they could no longer gad about in private jets, Hummers and limousines or had to turn off the air-conditioning in their palatial villas?
Recently, I came across a quote by one of the better Scrooges, Ralph Richardson: “I have put on so many make-ups that sometimes I have feared that when I go to wipe it off, there will be nobody left underneath.” When you couple that notion with the fear some camera-shy aborigines have about their souls being stolen when their pictures are taken, I think we all have a clearer idea of why people like Whoopi Goldberg, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Sean Penn, say the nutty things they do.
That brings us to Barack Obama, who’s never seen a TV camera or a teleprompter he didn’t lust after. Come to think of it, it’s too bad that his administration isn’t a TV show. If it were, we could at least hope it would be canceled after one season instead of four.
In case you missed it, he recently lifted the HIV Treatment and Immigration Ban, thus throwing open our borders to the diseased of the world, including that part of the world where many men believe that AIDS can be cured by having sex with young female virgins. But, really, who amongst us hasn’t at one time or another entertained the notion that what America really needs is an influx of foreigners with highly infectious diseases requiring really expensive, taxpayer-subsidized, health care?
Finally, allow me to introduce you to Diane Metcalf-Leggette, a first year student at Princeton, who is demanding that she be allotted twice as much time to take tests as her classmates. It’s her contention that she suffers from four separate learning disabilities; namely, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, mixed receptive-expressive language disorder, disorder of written expression and developmental coordination disorder. These conditions, according to her complaint, hinder her ability to process information and communicate in writing.
Well, heaven knows I’m as sympathetic as the next fellow when it comes to those poor souls cursed with mixed receptive-expressive language disorder, a group that I assume includes Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd and Henry Waxman, but, frankly, I find myself in a muddle. I believe, by the way, that my condition is known in medical circles as the hopeless search for common sense in a world gone mad disorder.
For instance, in spite of my best efforts to ward them off, a number of questions come to mind and refuse to leave. One, I ask myself what is this doofus doing at Princeton; two, what would she do with a degree even if they gave her a month and a half to take each and every test for the next four years; and, three, what the heck is a person with her particular problems doing carting around a name containing 20 letters and a hyphen?
Periodically, I find that my random thoughts begin to pile up and threaten to overflow from the dusty attic I call my brain. At such times, I have to decide whether to wrap them up and pass them off as gifts or place them curbside for the trash collectors. Inasmuch as we are fast-approaching Christmas season, try to consider the following remarks with the same equanimity you do those holiday fruitcakes that keep showing up on your doorstep year after year.
To begin with, could somebody please explain why they keep churning out one version of “The Christmas Carol” after another? Now, I have nothing against Charles Dickens’ little fable and, in fact, back in the third grade I portrayed Tiny Tim in a class production that is still spoken of in hushed tones. But isn’t enough ever enough? This December, Jim Carrey is taking a crack at Ebenezer Scrooge. The question is why. In the years since the 1914 silent film starring Charles Rock, there have been over 50 versions produced for either TV or the movies. Six Oscar winners -- Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Fredric March, Walter Matthau, Jack Palance and George C. Scott -- have bah-humbugged their way through the part, and another four Oscar nominees -- John Carradine, Basil Rathbone, James Whitmore and Sir Ralph Richardson -- have given it a go, while a fifth, James Earl Jones, had to settle for merely narrating a version.
Next on the agenda is the recent election in New York’s 23rd congressional district. That was the race in which ACORN’s favorite “Republican,” Dierdre Scozzafava, dropped out at the last minute, throwing her support to the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, who managed to defeat Doug Hoffman, a conservative candidate with the personality and verbal skills of a guppy, by a scant three percent. Interestingly, nearly six percent of the goofballs in upper state New York trooped out and cast their votes for non-candidate Scozzafava. Which strongly suggests that when Mr. Owens goes to Washington, he should rent, not buy.
In the wake of GOP gubernatorial victories that same day in Virginia and New Jersey, Nancy Pelosi bragged that Owens had won in a district that had elected one Republican after another ever since the Civil War. As usual, she lied. Although the area has been gerrymandered any number of times over the years, Republicans haven’t been elected with any regularity even since the Vietnam War. In fact, 11 of the past 15 representatives from the district have been Democrats!
Speaking of House Speaker Pelosi, do you think she would be quite so determined to shove Obamacare down our throats if members of Congress had to live under the same system as the rest of us? Do you think for even one minute that she would agree to a health care plan that rationed plastic surgery?
For that matter, can you imagine Obama’s Hollywood groupies supporting cap and trade if it meant they could no longer gad about in private jets, Hummers and limousines or had to turn off the air-conditioning in their palatial villas?
Recently, I came across a quote by one of the better Scrooges, Ralph Richardson: “I have put on so many make-ups that sometimes I have feared that when I go to wipe it off, there will be nobody left underneath.” When you couple that notion with the fear some camera-shy aborigines have about their souls being stolen when their pictures are taken, I think we all have a clearer idea of why people like Whoopi Goldberg, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Sean Penn, say the nutty things they do.
That brings us to Barack Obama, who’s never seen a TV camera or a teleprompter he didn’t lust after. Come to think of it, it’s too bad that his administration isn’t a TV show. If it were, we could at least hope it would be canceled after one season instead of four.
In case you missed it, he recently lifted the HIV Treatment and Immigration Ban, thus throwing open our borders to the diseased of the world, including that part of the world where many men believe that AIDS can be cured by having sex with young female virgins. But, really, who amongst us hasn’t at one time or another entertained the notion that what America really needs is an influx of foreigners with highly infectious diseases requiring really expensive, taxpayer-subsidized, health care?
Finally, allow me to introduce you to Diane Metcalf-Leggette, a first year student at Princeton, who is demanding that she be allotted twice as much time to take tests as her classmates. It’s her contention that she suffers from four separate learning disabilities; namely, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, mixed receptive-expressive language disorder, disorder of written expression and developmental coordination disorder. These conditions, according to her complaint, hinder her ability to process information and communicate in writing.
Well, heaven knows I’m as sympathetic as the next fellow when it comes to those poor souls cursed with mixed receptive-expressive language disorder, a group that I assume includes Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd and Henry Waxman, but, frankly, I find myself in a muddle. I believe, by the way, that my condition is known in medical circles as the hopeless search for common sense in a world gone mad disorder.
For instance, in spite of my best efforts to ward them off, a number of questions come to mind and refuse to leave. One, I ask myself what is this doofus doing at Princeton; two, what would she do with a degree even if they gave her a month and a half to take each and every test for the next four years; and, three, what the heck is a person with her particular problems doing carting around a name containing 20 letters and a hyphen?
Friday, November 27, 2009
Redistributing Whose Wealth?
by Burt Prelutsky
For some peculiar reason, America’s left-wingers object to being called Socialists. In fact, we have only one member of Congress, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who has the gumption to admit he is one. Still, so far as I can tell, he’s no more socialistic than any of the other leftist pinheads in Washington. I mean, the truth is, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, Brad Sherman, Barbara Lee and all the rest of that silly crowd vote exactly the same as Sanders, so why aren’t they equally honest about their true identities?
Instead, they walk around like a bunch of mild-mannered Clark Kents, but as soon as a vote is called, they rush off to the nearest phone booth and emerge wearing a cape and little booties, just in time to vote for Obamacare, trillion dollar stimulus packages and cap & trade.
What is even more disturbing is that it’s not just the liberal media that denies the obvious fact that the “S” on Barack Obama’s own chest stands for Socialist. I keep hearing such people as Bill O’Reilly and Michael Medved taking members of their audience to task for even suggesting such a thing. I’m sorry, folks, but the emperor is not only naked as a jaybird, but he’s a bigger left-wing dingbat than Hugo Chavez.
Let us not forget that Obama was the presidential candidate who told Joe the Plumber that redistributing wealth was a good thing. Lest anyone think that was a one-time slip of the tongue, it was also Obama who announced that the terrible failing of the Constitution, the Supreme Court and even the Civil Rights movement, was that none of them ever promoted the redistribution of wealth.
Well, the way I see it, redistributing one’s own wealth is called charity. Redistributing other people’s, when done by the government, is totalitarianism. When perpetrated by an individual, such as Jesse James, Willie Sutton or Bernard Madoff, it’s called a felony.
To be honest, there have been times, even here in America, when socialism has been benign. We’ve had agrarian communes that fostered a share-the-wealth policy, although it wasn’t wealth, so much as labor and food that was shared. Israel has a long history of such communes, known as kibbutzim. The best thing about such communities, aside from the fact that people live there of their own free choice, is that sloths and troublemakers are easily spotted and banished, unlike the way it is in capitalist societies, where even able-bodied sluggards and ne’er-do-wells are able to survive through the generosity of the productive.
The way it works here in America, I regret to say, is that the chronically indolent are either given welfare or elected to political office.
For some peculiar reason, America’s left-wingers object to being called Socialists. In fact, we have only one member of Congress, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who has the gumption to admit he is one. Still, so far as I can tell, he’s no more socialistic than any of the other leftist pinheads in Washington. I mean, the truth is, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, Brad Sherman, Barbara Lee and all the rest of that silly crowd vote exactly the same as Sanders, so why aren’t they equally honest about their true identities?
Instead, they walk around like a bunch of mild-mannered Clark Kents, but as soon as a vote is called, they rush off to the nearest phone booth and emerge wearing a cape and little booties, just in time to vote for Obamacare, trillion dollar stimulus packages and cap & trade.
What is even more disturbing is that it’s not just the liberal media that denies the obvious fact that the “S” on Barack Obama’s own chest stands for Socialist. I keep hearing such people as Bill O’Reilly and Michael Medved taking members of their audience to task for even suggesting such a thing. I’m sorry, folks, but the emperor is not only naked as a jaybird, but he’s a bigger left-wing dingbat than Hugo Chavez.
Let us not forget that Obama was the presidential candidate who told Joe the Plumber that redistributing wealth was a good thing. Lest anyone think that was a one-time slip of the tongue, it was also Obama who announced that the terrible failing of the Constitution, the Supreme Court and even the Civil Rights movement, was that none of them ever promoted the redistribution of wealth.
Well, the way I see it, redistributing one’s own wealth is called charity. Redistributing other people’s, when done by the government, is totalitarianism. When perpetrated by an individual, such as Jesse James, Willie Sutton or Bernard Madoff, it’s called a felony.
To be honest, there have been times, even here in America, when socialism has been benign. We’ve had agrarian communes that fostered a share-the-wealth policy, although it wasn’t wealth, so much as labor and food that was shared. Israel has a long history of such communes, known as kibbutzim. The best thing about such communities, aside from the fact that people live there of their own free choice, is that sloths and troublemakers are easily spotted and banished, unlike the way it is in capitalist societies, where even able-bodied sluggards and ne’er-do-wells are able to survive through the generosity of the productive.
The way it works here in America, I regret to say, is that the chronically indolent are either given welfare or elected to political office.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Hollywood Elitists And Other Morons
by Burt Prelutsky
A lot of people seemed shocked to discover that the folks at the National Endowment of the Arts were so ready, even anxious, to devote their talents to propagandizing on behalf of Obama and his administration. That merely proves that a lot of people haven’t been paying attention.
It’s my guess that a majority of those involved with the NEA -- even those few who are talented -- are always eager to roll over for left-wing politicians. Partly it’s because they are so hungry for attention and partly because they lack anything resembling a moral compass.
Allow me to give you a few notable examples of the way that people who earn their living in the areas of art and entertainment can voluntarily blind themselves to those matters that have moral implications. Just recently, we got to watch a swarm of Hollywood retards climbing all over themselves in a rush to defend Roman Polanski, a piece of Euro-trash who confessed to having raped a 13-year-old child. All sorts of big name, small brain, celebrities lined up to sign petitions on his behalf. By attesting to his character, they merely confirmed that they lacked any themselves.
Hollywood is the place where the members of the Motion Picture Academy were once so angry at producer Jack Warner for casting Audrey Hepburn, instead of Julie Andrews, in “My Fair Lady, that they refused to even nominate Ms. Hepburn for her terrific performance as Eliza Doolittle. However, proving, as usual, that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote even when politics aren’t involved, these lunkheads then gave the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture to “My Fair Lady,” which enabled the very same Jack Warner to stride onstage to thunderous applause.
Then there was the matter of Cliff Robertson and David Begelman. When Robertson, an Oscar-winning actor, discovered that Begelman, the head of Columbia Pictures, had forged his signature on a $10,000 check, he blew the whistle. After a police investigation, it turned out that Begelman had been financing his gambling habit with a lot of other people’s money, including Judy Garland, whom he had blackmailed. The upshot was that Robertson had his acting career short-circuited, whereas Begelman, who was only sentenced to community service, was then hired to run MGM.
Shortly after the scandal occurred, I happened to be having lunch with my agent in a restaurant loaded with Hollywood types. When Begelman entered, there was such a flurry of people competing for his attention, you could have mistaken them for a covey of cardinals vying to smooch the pope’s ring.
It’s not just actors, directors and producers, who act like dopes. Consider writer Norman Mailer. Perhaps because he was the fellow who once tried to settle a domestic dispute by stabbing the second of his six wives, Jack Abbott, who was serving time for bank robbery and murder, decided he’d be the ideal pen pal. Mailer became so enamored of Abbott’s writing, he not only used his considerable influence to get Abbott’s book, “In the Belly of the Beast,” published, but got this career criminal paroled. In New York, quite naturally, Abbott became the toast of the literati crowd, but only for a little while because six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed 22-year-old Richard Adan to death.
Saving the best for last brings us to Leni Riefenstahl. In Berlin, in the 30s, as in Hollywood at any time, it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew, and Leni was a chum of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. Think of him as the head of Germany’s NEA. It was Herr Goebbels who helped get her the opportunity to make “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” a couple of over-wrought “documentaries” dedicated to hyping the Third Reich.
After the end of World War II and for the remaining half of her 101 years, American and European cineastes -- the same twerps who do cartwheels over Michael Moore’s propaganda flicks -- showered her with honors and acclaim. This in spite of the fact that although she claimed she wasn’t a Nazi and would barely have recognized Hitler if she’d tripped over him, had said, “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.” Sort of sounds like Chris Matthews going on about Obama or Oliver Stone mooning over Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, doesn’t it?
In 1993, Riefenstahl had the gall to deny that she deliberately attempted to create pro-Nazi propaganda. For good measure, she claimed she was disgusted that “Triumph of the Will” was used in such a way. It was reminiscent of Captain Renault’s shock upon discovering that gambling was taking place in the backroom at Rick’s, all the while pocketing his winnings.
Having seen her most famous films, I can assure you that unless you cut the movies up into a million little slivers of celluloid and used them for toothpicks, there was no other conceivable use for them except as Nazi propaganda.
Moreover, in 1934, Riefenstahl said that “Mein Kampf” had made a tremendous impression on her. “I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the very first page. I felt a man who could write such a book should undoubtedly lead Germany. I felt very happy that such a man had come.”
She was so impressed with the book that she wrote the author a fan letter. The letter led to a meeting. The meeting led to her directing “Victory of Faith,” a movie about the fifth Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg. So much for her claim that she really only knew Hitler from his photos.
In fact, for someone who spent so many years churning out propaganda films, she was rather inept when it came to lying. For instance, on one occasion she claimed that she was totally unaware that concentration camps even existed, while another time she swore that she only worked for the Nazis because Goebbels had threatened to send her to a concentration camp if she didn’t cooperate.
Frankly, what confounds me is why she wasted even a single second lying about her past. I mean, even if she had been good at it, why bother? After all, sensible and moral people never believed her self-serving malarkey; and, as for the celebrity crowd, they simply didn’t care. They never do.
A lot of people seemed shocked to discover that the folks at the National Endowment of the Arts were so ready, even anxious, to devote their talents to propagandizing on behalf of Obama and his administration. That merely proves that a lot of people haven’t been paying attention.
It’s my guess that a majority of those involved with the NEA -- even those few who are talented -- are always eager to roll over for left-wing politicians. Partly it’s because they are so hungry for attention and partly because they lack anything resembling a moral compass.
Allow me to give you a few notable examples of the way that people who earn their living in the areas of art and entertainment can voluntarily blind themselves to those matters that have moral implications. Just recently, we got to watch a swarm of Hollywood retards climbing all over themselves in a rush to defend Roman Polanski, a piece of Euro-trash who confessed to having raped a 13-year-old child. All sorts of big name, small brain, celebrities lined up to sign petitions on his behalf. By attesting to his character, they merely confirmed that they lacked any themselves.
Hollywood is the place where the members of the Motion Picture Academy were once so angry at producer Jack Warner for casting Audrey Hepburn, instead of Julie Andrews, in “My Fair Lady, that they refused to even nominate Ms. Hepburn for her terrific performance as Eliza Doolittle. However, proving, as usual, that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote even when politics aren’t involved, these lunkheads then gave the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture to “My Fair Lady,” which enabled the very same Jack Warner to stride onstage to thunderous applause.
Then there was the matter of Cliff Robertson and David Begelman. When Robertson, an Oscar-winning actor, discovered that Begelman, the head of Columbia Pictures, had forged his signature on a $10,000 check, he blew the whistle. After a police investigation, it turned out that Begelman had been financing his gambling habit with a lot of other people’s money, including Judy Garland, whom he had blackmailed. The upshot was that Robertson had his acting career short-circuited, whereas Begelman, who was only sentenced to community service, was then hired to run MGM.
Shortly after the scandal occurred, I happened to be having lunch with my agent in a restaurant loaded with Hollywood types. When Begelman entered, there was such a flurry of people competing for his attention, you could have mistaken them for a covey of cardinals vying to smooch the pope’s ring.
It’s not just actors, directors and producers, who act like dopes. Consider writer Norman Mailer. Perhaps because he was the fellow who once tried to settle a domestic dispute by stabbing the second of his six wives, Jack Abbott, who was serving time for bank robbery and murder, decided he’d be the ideal pen pal. Mailer became so enamored of Abbott’s writing, he not only used his considerable influence to get Abbott’s book, “In the Belly of the Beast,” published, but got this career criminal paroled. In New York, quite naturally, Abbott became the toast of the literati crowd, but only for a little while because six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed 22-year-old Richard Adan to death.
Saving the best for last brings us to Leni Riefenstahl. In Berlin, in the 30s, as in Hollywood at any time, it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew, and Leni was a chum of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. Think of him as the head of Germany’s NEA. It was Herr Goebbels who helped get her the opportunity to make “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” a couple of over-wrought “documentaries” dedicated to hyping the Third Reich.
After the end of World War II and for the remaining half of her 101 years, American and European cineastes -- the same twerps who do cartwheels over Michael Moore’s propaganda flicks -- showered her with honors and acclaim. This in spite of the fact that although she claimed she wasn’t a Nazi and would barely have recognized Hitler if she’d tripped over him, had said, “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.” Sort of sounds like Chris Matthews going on about Obama or Oliver Stone mooning over Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, doesn’t it?
In 1993, Riefenstahl had the gall to deny that she deliberately attempted to create pro-Nazi propaganda. For good measure, she claimed she was disgusted that “Triumph of the Will” was used in such a way. It was reminiscent of Captain Renault’s shock upon discovering that gambling was taking place in the backroom at Rick’s, all the while pocketing his winnings.
Having seen her most famous films, I can assure you that unless you cut the movies up into a million little slivers of celluloid and used them for toothpicks, there was no other conceivable use for them except as Nazi propaganda.
Moreover, in 1934, Riefenstahl said that “Mein Kampf” had made a tremendous impression on her. “I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the very first page. I felt a man who could write such a book should undoubtedly lead Germany. I felt very happy that such a man had come.”
She was so impressed with the book that she wrote the author a fan letter. The letter led to a meeting. The meeting led to her directing “Victory of Faith,” a movie about the fifth Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg. So much for her claim that she really only knew Hitler from his photos.
In fact, for someone who spent so many years churning out propaganda films, she was rather inept when it came to lying. For instance, on one occasion she claimed that she was totally unaware that concentration camps even existed, while another time she swore that she only worked for the Nazis because Goebbels had threatened to send her to a concentration camp if she didn’t cooperate.
Frankly, what confounds me is why she wasted even a single second lying about her past. I mean, even if she had been good at it, why bother? After all, sensible and moral people never believed her self-serving malarkey; and, as for the celebrity crowd, they simply didn’t care. They never do.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The False Messiah
by Burt Prelutsky
When liberals wake up in the morning, what do you think they do first? Have a cup of coffee and a Danish or check their computers to get their talking points from the White House? And when they find themselves in a moral bind, do they ask themselves not what would Jesus do, but what would Obama suggest?
Another question that’s been plaguing me is whether Democrats regard inconsistency as their birthright. Or do they really think that when a GOP congressman calls a liar a liar to his face, it’s a sin worthy of censure and just possibly a good horsewhipping, but when a Democrat, Rep. Alan Grayson, in defense of Obamacare, insists that Republicans want sick people to die quickly, defends ACORN on the floor of Congress, and, for good measure, calls Linda Robertson, an advisor to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, “a K Street whore,” it’s just frank and robust political speech?
Speaking of Obamacare, how essential can it possibly be that Congress immediately passes a bill that won’t even go into effect until 2014, but the President refuses to be rushed into making a decision about a surge in Afghanistan? I realize that Obama’s IQ slides about 50 points whenever he’s deprived of his beloved teleprompter, but, unlike the nonsense about phantom Americans dying in the streets because of our terrible health care system, surely even he understands that there are actual flesh-and-blood soldiers dying in Afghanistan. In the meanwhile, Obama takes his own sweet time consulting his Ouija board. But, then, we all know that members of the military tend to be conservatives, so why should Obama care two figs about their well-being?
Just as a sidebar, doesn’t it seem strange that Garry Trudeau, who went so far as to list the names of soldiers who died in Iraq in his “Doonesbury” comic strip, doesn’t bother mentioning casualties in Afghanistan? Apparently, war is only evil when it’s being conducted by a Republican president.
Leave it to liberals to push through a trillion dollar stimulus bill that has resulted in unemployment rising from about 8.5% to roughly 10% in less than a year and then try to shove through a multi-trillion dollar bill that will bring Castrocare to America five years down the road. But, these, after all, are the same clucks who insisted we couldn’t drill our way out of an energy crisis because it would take 10 years for the oil to get from the ground to our local gas pumps. Although they never got around to explaining why it would take that long -- was the oil going to spend a decade playing hide-and-seek? -- the fact remains that had they started drilling back then, the gas would just about be here by now.
But, then, Democrats never feel an obligation to be logical. Otherwise, they might feel compelled to explain how it is that those beret-wearing, stinky cigarette-puffing, anti-American, left-wing nincompoops in France can manage to get 80% of their energy from nuclear plants, but we’re supposed to make do with windmills and the energy generated by hamsters running on their little wheels.
As much as I disagree with the current administration, I, for one, didn’t object to the government’s recent decision to move a GM plant from Michigan to Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware. It may not have been a nice thing to do, but I think it’s worth it just for the opportunity to hear how the union bigwigs explain it to the UAW members in Michigan, where unemployment is hovering around 15%. Hey, you poor suckers, how do you feel now about busting your butts, not to mention the union piggybank, to help elect Obama?
Speaking of Michigan, I assume you’ve all heard the audio on which a couple of women in the Detroit crowd lined up to get government checks were asked where they thought the money was coming from. It seems they believed the manna was coming straight from Obama. When they were then asked where they thought he was getting it, one of the ladies guessed it was from his stash. The first time I heard it, I had to laugh. By the second or third time, it occurred to me that they simply assumed that, like every other cheap Chicago hustler, Obama had a slush fund at his disposal for buying votes. Which, when you stop and think about it, is exactly who he is and, moreover, what the money is.
Those two women and millions more like them are being paid off for past and future favors. But if you’re one of those people who voted for this huckster and didn’t get your payoff in Detroit, you’re a lot dumber than those ladies.
Getting back to Democrats and their inconsistent ways, doesn’t it strike you as peculiar that they cried bloody murder over Nixon’s enemy list, but don’t say boo about Obama’s attack on Fox News; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; every American citizen who attended a Tea Party or a Townhall meeting; conservative blogs; Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck; the 1st and 2nd amendments; and in fact on everyone and anyone who objects to a single stupid idea concocted by the loony likes of Emanuel, Axelrod, Sunstein, Dunn, Holdren and Jones. If only Obama waged the war in Afghanistan with the same passion and conviction he wages war on his critics, one day we might actually defeat the Taliban and get to watch Osama bin Laden doing the tango with Rosie O’Donnell on “Dancing With the Stars.”
Some people -- not those folks who cling to their guns and their religion, you understand -- but some people look at Barack Obama and, rather than see a radical leftist who has no more business being the commander in chief than I do, see God Almighty. But I’m afraid they’re very much mistaken. There’s a world of difference between God and Obama. God, you see, believes in free will.
When liberals wake up in the morning, what do you think they do first? Have a cup of coffee and a Danish or check their computers to get their talking points from the White House? And when they find themselves in a moral bind, do they ask themselves not what would Jesus do, but what would Obama suggest?
Another question that’s been plaguing me is whether Democrats regard inconsistency as their birthright. Or do they really think that when a GOP congressman calls a liar a liar to his face, it’s a sin worthy of censure and just possibly a good horsewhipping, but when a Democrat, Rep. Alan Grayson, in defense of Obamacare, insists that Republicans want sick people to die quickly, defends ACORN on the floor of Congress, and, for good measure, calls Linda Robertson, an advisor to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, “a K Street whore,” it’s just frank and robust political speech?
Speaking of Obamacare, how essential can it possibly be that Congress immediately passes a bill that won’t even go into effect until 2014, but the President refuses to be rushed into making a decision about a surge in Afghanistan? I realize that Obama’s IQ slides about 50 points whenever he’s deprived of his beloved teleprompter, but, unlike the nonsense about phantom Americans dying in the streets because of our terrible health care system, surely even he understands that there are actual flesh-and-blood soldiers dying in Afghanistan. In the meanwhile, Obama takes his own sweet time consulting his Ouija board. But, then, we all know that members of the military tend to be conservatives, so why should Obama care two figs about their well-being?
Just as a sidebar, doesn’t it seem strange that Garry Trudeau, who went so far as to list the names of soldiers who died in Iraq in his “Doonesbury” comic strip, doesn’t bother mentioning casualties in Afghanistan? Apparently, war is only evil when it’s being conducted by a Republican president.
Leave it to liberals to push through a trillion dollar stimulus bill that has resulted in unemployment rising from about 8.5% to roughly 10% in less than a year and then try to shove through a multi-trillion dollar bill that will bring Castrocare to America five years down the road. But, these, after all, are the same clucks who insisted we couldn’t drill our way out of an energy crisis because it would take 10 years for the oil to get from the ground to our local gas pumps. Although they never got around to explaining why it would take that long -- was the oil going to spend a decade playing hide-and-seek? -- the fact remains that had they started drilling back then, the gas would just about be here by now.
But, then, Democrats never feel an obligation to be logical. Otherwise, they might feel compelled to explain how it is that those beret-wearing, stinky cigarette-puffing, anti-American, left-wing nincompoops in France can manage to get 80% of their energy from nuclear plants, but we’re supposed to make do with windmills and the energy generated by hamsters running on their little wheels.
As much as I disagree with the current administration, I, for one, didn’t object to the government’s recent decision to move a GM plant from Michigan to Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware. It may not have been a nice thing to do, but I think it’s worth it just for the opportunity to hear how the union bigwigs explain it to the UAW members in Michigan, where unemployment is hovering around 15%. Hey, you poor suckers, how do you feel now about busting your butts, not to mention the union piggybank, to help elect Obama?
Speaking of Michigan, I assume you’ve all heard the audio on which a couple of women in the Detroit crowd lined up to get government checks were asked where they thought the money was coming from. It seems they believed the manna was coming straight from Obama. When they were then asked where they thought he was getting it, one of the ladies guessed it was from his stash. The first time I heard it, I had to laugh. By the second or third time, it occurred to me that they simply assumed that, like every other cheap Chicago hustler, Obama had a slush fund at his disposal for buying votes. Which, when you stop and think about it, is exactly who he is and, moreover, what the money is.
Those two women and millions more like them are being paid off for past and future favors. But if you’re one of those people who voted for this huckster and didn’t get your payoff in Detroit, you’re a lot dumber than those ladies.
Getting back to Democrats and their inconsistent ways, doesn’t it strike you as peculiar that they cried bloody murder over Nixon’s enemy list, but don’t say boo about Obama’s attack on Fox News; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; every American citizen who attended a Tea Party or a Townhall meeting; conservative blogs; Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck; the 1st and 2nd amendments; and in fact on everyone and anyone who objects to a single stupid idea concocted by the loony likes of Emanuel, Axelrod, Sunstein, Dunn, Holdren and Jones. If only Obama waged the war in Afghanistan with the same passion and conviction he wages war on his critics, one day we might actually defeat the Taliban and get to watch Osama bin Laden doing the tango with Rosie O’Donnell on “Dancing With the Stars.”
Some people -- not those folks who cling to their guns and their religion, you understand -- but some people look at Barack Obama and, rather than see a radical leftist who has no more business being the commander in chief than I do, see God Almighty. But I’m afraid they’re very much mistaken. There’s a world of difference between God and Obama. God, you see, believes in free will.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Obama’s World And Welcome To It
by Burt Prelutsky
Many people were offended to see Barack Obama once again bowing to a foreign dignitary, the Emperor of Japan. For my part, I was actually relieved that at least this latest breech of protocol didn’t involve his kowtowing to one of America’s sworn enemies.
As most people are well aware, I have nothing but loathing for Obama’s policies, but even I am amazed by his reluctance to handle what I regard as the easy part of his job; namely, carrying off his responsibilities to be a figurehead, to be the proud symbol of this great and generous nation.
Instead, he tours the world on our dime apologizing for our alleged failings and transgressions. He goes to Denmark in order to lobby for the Olympics, in order that his corrupt Chicago cronies could cash in on crooked land deals, but he doesn’t go to Germany to help commemorate the falling of the Berlin Wall. Next, instead of expressing the grief that every decent American felt over the slaughter of American soldiers and an unborn baby by an Islamic terrorist, this bozo gave a partisan shout-out at a Native American shindig. Then, for good measure, he warned us not to jump to the conclusion that the Islamic terrorist was an Islamic terrorist.
If someone set out to show his utter contempt for this country and his disconnect from anything smacking of patriotism, including donning a lapel flag, pledging allegiance to the flag or covering his heart at the playing of our national anthem, he’d find it impossible to out-do our president.
I’m sure that a lot of us still recall the silent messages that American POWs sent us in photos taken by their North Vietnamese captors. They would hold their fingers in different ways to express their defiance of the enemy. I often find myself wondering what messages Barack Obama is sending, and to whom.
Recently, a friend sent me an email in which it was proposed that the Constitution be improved with a 28th amendment. It read: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and the Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”
I think that in 2010, any senator or representative, Republican or Democrat, who doesn’t sign on to co-sponsor the amendment should have to start looking for another job. I would also press for my wife’s 29th amendment, which states that when America’s economy takes a nosedive, the salaries of our elected officials are decreased to the same degree. After all, they’re not supposed to profit from their own corruption or incompetence. I mean, these goofballs work for us, not AIG or Goldman Sachs.
This past week, a reader sent me an email in which he referred to me as a philosopher. Even though I knew he intended it as a compliment, I denied it. A philosopher, it seems to me, is a person whose main preoccupation is figuring out why man exists and, whereas I believe the obvious answer is to keep the dogs fed, housed and bathed, the best he can come up with is that man exists so that he can ask why man exists.
Speaking of email, I often receive stuff that’s been floating around in cyberspace for years. I used to get annoyed when someone would send me something I’d already been sent 10 or 20 times, but, after finding that I’d passed along such things myself, I realized that if something was new to you, you had no way of knowing it had whiskers on it. Therefore, I suggest that whoever is the first person to send out these things should time-stamp it so that when it finally reaches me in 2015, I’ll know it’s been floating around for several years.
Getting back to Obama, how is it that there are still people around who regard him as a great orator instead of just a cheese-head who requires a teleprompter just to say “Hello,” and, for good measure, has this really annoying habit of turning…….every sentence into two distinct parts? But perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, apparently there’s a sizable segment of the population that is unable to tell that a can of beer is cold unless it turns blue.
I’m also aware that there are a lot of people who refuse to believe that Obama is anything but a regular Yankee Doodle Dandy, as American as Mom’s apple pie, in spite of the fact that in “Dreams From My Father,” he wrote that in college, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. Those friends,” he wrote, were “The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”
He also wrote about venturing into the East Village for “the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union.” Then, in search of additional inspiration, “I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia.”
The fact is that even after college, he was still cherry-picking his friends. As we all know, they included such various Marxists, Maoists and Mau Maus, as, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Frank Davis, Anita Dunn, Louis Farrakhan, Raila Ordinga, Cass Sunstein, Andy Stern and Rashid Khalidi.
Frankly, I think he would have come up with a more savory circle of friends if he had made his selection from Wanted posters adorning the walls of the local post office.
That group should tell you all you need to know about this menace who manages, simultaneously, to be a narcissist, a Marxist and as humorless as Joseph Stalin on a bad hair day.
Many people were offended to see Barack Obama once again bowing to a foreign dignitary, the Emperor of Japan. For my part, I was actually relieved that at least this latest breech of protocol didn’t involve his kowtowing to one of America’s sworn enemies.
As most people are well aware, I have nothing but loathing for Obama’s policies, but even I am amazed by his reluctance to handle what I regard as the easy part of his job; namely, carrying off his responsibilities to be a figurehead, to be the proud symbol of this great and generous nation.
Instead, he tours the world on our dime apologizing for our alleged failings and transgressions. He goes to Denmark in order to lobby for the Olympics, in order that his corrupt Chicago cronies could cash in on crooked land deals, but he doesn’t go to Germany to help commemorate the falling of the Berlin Wall. Next, instead of expressing the grief that every decent American felt over the slaughter of American soldiers and an unborn baby by an Islamic terrorist, this bozo gave a partisan shout-out at a Native American shindig. Then, for good measure, he warned us not to jump to the conclusion that the Islamic terrorist was an Islamic terrorist.
If someone set out to show his utter contempt for this country and his disconnect from anything smacking of patriotism, including donning a lapel flag, pledging allegiance to the flag or covering his heart at the playing of our national anthem, he’d find it impossible to out-do our president.
I’m sure that a lot of us still recall the silent messages that American POWs sent us in photos taken by their North Vietnamese captors. They would hold their fingers in different ways to express their defiance of the enemy. I often find myself wondering what messages Barack Obama is sending, and to whom.
Recently, a friend sent me an email in which it was proposed that the Constitution be improved with a 28th amendment. It read: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and the Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”
I think that in 2010, any senator or representative, Republican or Democrat, who doesn’t sign on to co-sponsor the amendment should have to start looking for another job. I would also press for my wife’s 29th amendment, which states that when America’s economy takes a nosedive, the salaries of our elected officials are decreased to the same degree. After all, they’re not supposed to profit from their own corruption or incompetence. I mean, these goofballs work for us, not AIG or Goldman Sachs.
This past week, a reader sent me an email in which he referred to me as a philosopher. Even though I knew he intended it as a compliment, I denied it. A philosopher, it seems to me, is a person whose main preoccupation is figuring out why man exists and, whereas I believe the obvious answer is to keep the dogs fed, housed and bathed, the best he can come up with is that man exists so that he can ask why man exists.
Speaking of email, I often receive stuff that’s been floating around in cyberspace for years. I used to get annoyed when someone would send me something I’d already been sent 10 or 20 times, but, after finding that I’d passed along such things myself, I realized that if something was new to you, you had no way of knowing it had whiskers on it. Therefore, I suggest that whoever is the first person to send out these things should time-stamp it so that when it finally reaches me in 2015, I’ll know it’s been floating around for several years.
Getting back to Obama, how is it that there are still people around who regard him as a great orator instead of just a cheese-head who requires a teleprompter just to say “Hello,” and, for good measure, has this really annoying habit of turning…….every sentence into two distinct parts? But perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, apparently there’s a sizable segment of the population that is unable to tell that a can of beer is cold unless it turns blue.
I’m also aware that there are a lot of people who refuse to believe that Obama is anything but a regular Yankee Doodle Dandy, as American as Mom’s apple pie, in spite of the fact that in “Dreams From My Father,” he wrote that in college, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. Those friends,” he wrote, were “The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”
He also wrote about venturing into the East Village for “the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union.” Then, in search of additional inspiration, “I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia.”
The fact is that even after college, he was still cherry-picking his friends. As we all know, they included such various Marxists, Maoists and Mau Maus, as, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Frank Davis, Anita Dunn, Louis Farrakhan, Raila Ordinga, Cass Sunstein, Andy Stern and Rashid Khalidi.
Frankly, I think he would have come up with a more savory circle of friends if he had made his selection from Wanted posters adorning the walls of the local post office.
That group should tell you all you need to know about this menace who manages, simultaneously, to be a narcissist, a Marxist and as humorless as Joseph Stalin on a bad hair day.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Blacks And Blacklisting
by Burt Prelutsky
When it comes to liberals, a question that bedevils me is what it is about them that annoys me the most. I can’t decide if it’s their hypocrisy or their self-righteousness.
For instance, when George W. Bush was in office, leftists called him every dirty name in the book and then claimed they were merely carrying out their patriotic duty. However, once Obama was in the White House, they denounced anyone who even questioned the wisdom of quadrupling the national debt or transforming America in his own radical image as a fascist, a racist or a member of a drooling, knuckle-dragging mob.
Liberals campaign to turn Easter Vacation into Spring Break, Christmas into Winter Break and Columbus Day into something called Fall Day, as if we’re all pagans who hold the seasons sacred and prostate ourselves to the weather gods. At the same time, at least here in California, they’ve managed to make March 31st, Cesar Chavez’s birthday, into a state holiday and just recently turned May 22nd into Harvey Milk Day. So, while George Washington and Abe Lincoln have to share President’s Day, a labor leader and a homosexual councilman each gets his own holiday.
Inasmuch as I am one of the few people who have written honestly about race in America, you’d think that nobody would have to misquote me in order to prove I don’t subscribe to political correctness. But, alas, liberals don’t believe in leaving anything to chance. So it is that some time ago, in response to a black reader’s email in which he denounced white America as racist, I wrote that if this were truly a racist nation, such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, Danny Glover, Kobe Bryant, Will Smith, Michael Jordan, Ryan Howard, Donovan McNabb, Beyonce, Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Barack Obama, wouldn’t be rich and famous. Instead, they’d be slaves, exiled to a gulag or dead. I pointed out that’s how things worked in a racist society.
I felt I had stated the case clearly and honestly. The next thing I knew, someone had changed the wording around in order to make it sound as if that was the way I wished things were! After the big lie went out on the Internet, I began receiving obscene messages from scores of black people who had never read me before. Of course they still hadn’t, but they had no way of knowing that. Furthermore, most of them seemed reluctant to believe me when I tried to set the record straight.
Recently, I received an email from a black man who identified himself as a 42-year-old living in a Chicago suburb. In response to an article I wrote attacking affirmative action, he wrote: “In the article you leveled the challenge as to why Asians don’t require an equalizing of the playing field. I think it has something to do with an unwritten pecking order. Let a white woman bring home an Asian man versus a black man and let’s see what the difference in reaction will be. Asians have always been more accepted because of that pecking order. Rightly or wrongly, that’s reality!!”
I replied: “Whose reality? The Chinese were treated terribly when they were brought here to lay railroad tracks. They were treated like untouchables and forced to live in slums that were worse than anything you can imagine. During World War II, Japanese people, including American citizens, were sent off to concentration camps after having their farms and homes confiscated. It appears that liberals have been treating blacks like victims for so many years that many of you have lost sight of the fact that a great many people have far worse lives and far fewer options.”
His response: “I’ve contended that I’d be ready to scrap affirmative action when sexual harassment laws are scrapped, speed limits for driving are suggestive, and paying one’s taxes is done on the honor system. Until then, reality tells me that such measures are needed so that the state can coerce the majority to do the right thing.”
“The problem with your argument,” I wrote, “is that sexual harassment laws, speed limits and paying taxes, apply to every American. Affirmative action simply benefits blacks, allowing them to leapfrog over more qualified students who, as a rule, happen to be Asian. Furthermore, I’d say that the state has done everything in its power to redress past mistakes for over 45 years now, with no end in sight. And what are the results of those good intentions? A 70% illegitimacy rate, a major presence in the world of illegal drugs and, in spite of affirmative action, more young males going to jail than to college. So, just how long are white people supposed to feel guilty for stuff they didn’t even do? Most white people, for instance, didn’t have ancestors who owned slaves, but a great many of them had ancestors who died fighting in the war that ended slavery. Perhaps I missed it, but I’m not aware that black Americans have ever acknowledged their debt to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.”
Roughly a hundred years ago, the black Renaissance man, Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, observed: “There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
Imagine, the remarkable man who said those words never even had the opportunity of meeting Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee or John Conyers.
This brings us to the Hollywood Blacklist, a minor event which has received more attention and aroused far more passion in left-wing circles than the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact; Stalin and Mao’s 50 years of butchery; and Julius Rosenberg’s traitorous activities on behalf of the Soviet Union, put together.
I find it ironic, not to mention typically hypocritical, that a great many Hollywood lefties regarded “On the Waterfront” as a pathetic attempt by director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg to justify their naming names to HUAC by making their protagonist, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a squealer. However, six years prior to “Waterfront,” Abe Polonsky, who, at the age of 89, picketed the 1999 Academy Awards because 90-year-old Kazan was being given an honorary Oscar, wrote and directed a movie, “Force of Evil,” in which his protagonist, Joe Morse (John Garfield), winds up squealing to the cops. Oddly enough, in each case, the motivation is the murder of the hero’s brother -- portrayed by Rod Steiger in one, by Thomas Gomez in the other.
Apparently, squealing is okay if the bad guys are doing something truly reprehensible, such as running the numbers racket in New York City, but totally immoral if the villains are merely lending aid and comfort to -- not to mention tithing -- the Soviet Union.
Polonsky, who died an unrepentant Communist, once said, in reference to the HUAC hearings: “If you said you were sorry you were a radical and had seen the error of your ways, you were let off. That’s the kind of thing they do in Communist countries, but we’re supposed to be a free country.”
For the record, Polonksy was also the fellow who said, “Because we can’t be Joseph Stalin, we become movie directors.”
Do these idiots ever stop and actually listen to the things they say?
When it comes to liberals, a question that bedevils me is what it is about them that annoys me the most. I can’t decide if it’s their hypocrisy or their self-righteousness.
For instance, when George W. Bush was in office, leftists called him every dirty name in the book and then claimed they were merely carrying out their patriotic duty. However, once Obama was in the White House, they denounced anyone who even questioned the wisdom of quadrupling the national debt or transforming America in his own radical image as a fascist, a racist or a member of a drooling, knuckle-dragging mob.
Liberals campaign to turn Easter Vacation into Spring Break, Christmas into Winter Break and Columbus Day into something called Fall Day, as if we’re all pagans who hold the seasons sacred and prostate ourselves to the weather gods. At the same time, at least here in California, they’ve managed to make March 31st, Cesar Chavez’s birthday, into a state holiday and just recently turned May 22nd into Harvey Milk Day. So, while George Washington and Abe Lincoln have to share President’s Day, a labor leader and a homosexual councilman each gets his own holiday.
Inasmuch as I am one of the few people who have written honestly about race in America, you’d think that nobody would have to misquote me in order to prove I don’t subscribe to political correctness. But, alas, liberals don’t believe in leaving anything to chance. So it is that some time ago, in response to a black reader’s email in which he denounced white America as racist, I wrote that if this were truly a racist nation, such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, Danny Glover, Kobe Bryant, Will Smith, Michael Jordan, Ryan Howard, Donovan McNabb, Beyonce, Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Barack Obama, wouldn’t be rich and famous. Instead, they’d be slaves, exiled to a gulag or dead. I pointed out that’s how things worked in a racist society.
I felt I had stated the case clearly and honestly. The next thing I knew, someone had changed the wording around in order to make it sound as if that was the way I wished things were! After the big lie went out on the Internet, I began receiving obscene messages from scores of black people who had never read me before. Of course they still hadn’t, but they had no way of knowing that. Furthermore, most of them seemed reluctant to believe me when I tried to set the record straight.
Recently, I received an email from a black man who identified himself as a 42-year-old living in a Chicago suburb. In response to an article I wrote attacking affirmative action, he wrote: “In the article you leveled the challenge as to why Asians don’t require an equalizing of the playing field. I think it has something to do with an unwritten pecking order. Let a white woman bring home an Asian man versus a black man and let’s see what the difference in reaction will be. Asians have always been more accepted because of that pecking order. Rightly or wrongly, that’s reality!!”
I replied: “Whose reality? The Chinese were treated terribly when they were brought here to lay railroad tracks. They were treated like untouchables and forced to live in slums that were worse than anything you can imagine. During World War II, Japanese people, including American citizens, were sent off to concentration camps after having their farms and homes confiscated. It appears that liberals have been treating blacks like victims for so many years that many of you have lost sight of the fact that a great many people have far worse lives and far fewer options.”
His response: “I’ve contended that I’d be ready to scrap affirmative action when sexual harassment laws are scrapped, speed limits for driving are suggestive, and paying one’s taxes is done on the honor system. Until then, reality tells me that such measures are needed so that the state can coerce the majority to do the right thing.”
“The problem with your argument,” I wrote, “is that sexual harassment laws, speed limits and paying taxes, apply to every American. Affirmative action simply benefits blacks, allowing them to leapfrog over more qualified students who, as a rule, happen to be Asian. Furthermore, I’d say that the state has done everything in its power to redress past mistakes for over 45 years now, with no end in sight. And what are the results of those good intentions? A 70% illegitimacy rate, a major presence in the world of illegal drugs and, in spite of affirmative action, more young males going to jail than to college. So, just how long are white people supposed to feel guilty for stuff they didn’t even do? Most white people, for instance, didn’t have ancestors who owned slaves, but a great many of them had ancestors who died fighting in the war that ended slavery. Perhaps I missed it, but I’m not aware that black Americans have ever acknowledged their debt to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.”
Roughly a hundred years ago, the black Renaissance man, Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, observed: “There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
Imagine, the remarkable man who said those words never even had the opportunity of meeting Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee or John Conyers.
This brings us to the Hollywood Blacklist, a minor event which has received more attention and aroused far more passion in left-wing circles than the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact; Stalin and Mao’s 50 years of butchery; and Julius Rosenberg’s traitorous activities on behalf of the Soviet Union, put together.
I find it ironic, not to mention typically hypocritical, that a great many Hollywood lefties regarded “On the Waterfront” as a pathetic attempt by director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg to justify their naming names to HUAC by making their protagonist, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a squealer. However, six years prior to “Waterfront,” Abe Polonsky, who, at the age of 89, picketed the 1999 Academy Awards because 90-year-old Kazan was being given an honorary Oscar, wrote and directed a movie, “Force of Evil,” in which his protagonist, Joe Morse (John Garfield), winds up squealing to the cops. Oddly enough, in each case, the motivation is the murder of the hero’s brother -- portrayed by Rod Steiger in one, by Thomas Gomez in the other.
Apparently, squealing is okay if the bad guys are doing something truly reprehensible, such as running the numbers racket in New York City, but totally immoral if the villains are merely lending aid and comfort to -- not to mention tithing -- the Soviet Union.
Polonsky, who died an unrepentant Communist, once said, in reference to the HUAC hearings: “If you said you were sorry you were a radical and had seen the error of your ways, you were let off. That’s the kind of thing they do in Communist countries, but we’re supposed to be a free country.”
For the record, Polonksy was also the fellow who said, “Because we can’t be Joseph Stalin, we become movie directors.”
Do these idiots ever stop and actually listen to the things they say?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Obama, The World's Greatest Menace
by Burt Prelutsky
When Barack Obama was campaigning -- not that he’s ever stopped -- back in 2008, he made a number of promises. As we all know, like a cad on the make, he was only trying to get us in the sack. Once he had his way with us, he barely remembered our name, let alone his various vows.
Some of the things he swore to included keeping lobbyists out of his administration, providing five days for the public to review pending legislation and a bi-partisan approach to problem-solving. Instead, lobbyists, particularly those representing unions, have freer access to the Oval Office than Michelle and the kids. Not only is the public not given time to digest major legislation, but neither are the legislators. Early on, you may recall, Congress was given less than 24 hours to vote on an 1100-page, trillion dollar, so-called stimulus bill; more recently, when it came to health care, Obama was telling the sheep on Capitol Hill to vote even before an actual bill was written!
So far as bi-partisanship is concerned, the Republicans have been banished to Washington’s equivalent of Siberia. These days, bi-partisanship simply means that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are in agreement.
There is one promise, however, that Obama has kept. He vowed transparency, and anyone who can’t plainly see what the rock star and his left-wing groupies (Axelrod, Emanuel, Jeff Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn) are up to is simply spending too much time watching “American Idol” and college football.
Consider, if you will, the way that Obama has managed to take the spotlight off his attempt to grab control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy that’s devoted to health care and to put the kibosh on conservative talk radio and free access to the Internet. All he had to do was declare war on Fox News. Just like that, the mass media, otherwise known as faux news, turned its attention to the phoniest battle since Gorgeous George and the Super Swedish Angel hung up their wrestling tights.
The way the media carried on, you’d have thought Obama was trying to decide whether to send 40,000 additional troops to fight in Afghanistan or to invade Fox.
On the other hand, it is just possible that Obama’s feud with Fox merely proves that he is as thin-skinned and as vain as some of us have suspected all along, which would fit right in with the narcissism that his constant TV appearances suggests. Not since FDR have we had a president so in love with the sound of his own voice. Not since Jimmy Carter have we had a president so convinced of his own saintliness.
Although Obama is a prime example of egomania, liberals generally hold themselves and one another in such preposterously high regard that normal people -- in other words, conservatives -- can only laugh.
For instance, because liberals are always blathering on about how much they love Mother Nature and how concerned they are about ecology, they are never asked to explain why they are so much better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk. It’s not just the obvious phonies, either -- elitists such as Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who live in mansions and fly around in private jets, leaving carbon footprints the equivalent of fair-sized communities in their wake -- that I have in mind.
I’m also referring to the crowd that showed up in Washington for Obama’s coronation and left our nation’s capitol looking like a pigsty.
I’m thinking of the California Coastal Commission, the folks entrusted with keeping the Golden State’s coastline pristine, but who can always be convinced, for the right price, to come up with a variance.
Another example of ecological hypocrisy involves those young Latinos called taggers and graffiti artists by liberals, vandals and punks by the rest of us. I have actually heard lefties refer to the spray-painted messes these jerks create as native art. But, naturally, they never seem to commission the youthful Rembrandts to come out and decorate their fences, walls and garages.
While on the subject, we shouldn’t overlook the greenies who populate Hollywood and who never once gave George W. Bush a thumbs-up for taking out Saddam Hussein even though his setting fire to the oilfields of Kuwait was the single greatest man-made ecological disaster in history, rivaled only by Adam Sandler’s 30-odd movies.
Finally we come to nature boy himself, Robert Redford. Although I am a free market capitalist and believe that Redford should be allowed to build a ski resort, a giant cell phone tower or even have his head carved out of a mountainside, if he chooses to on his own land, I have to question the environmental bona fides of a guy who creates a film festival in the snow-covered hinterlands of Utah.
I mean, every year, upwards of 50,000 people jet in from all over the world for the Sundance Film Festival. It may be swell for the Utah economy to have all those coke-sniffing, fossil fuel-burning, mugs showing up to watch bad movies and make distribution deals, but if you were really concerned about preserving the environment, wouldn’t it make more sense for these clucks to stay home and watch the movies on their TV sets the way the rest of us do?
In my experience, which consists of watching movies on airplanes, a movie that stinks at sea level reeks just as badly at 30,000 feet. Otherwise, why settle for Utah? It would make far more sense to hold a film festival atop Mt. Everest.
When Barack Obama was campaigning -- not that he’s ever stopped -- back in 2008, he made a number of promises. As we all know, like a cad on the make, he was only trying to get us in the sack. Once he had his way with us, he barely remembered our name, let alone his various vows.
Some of the things he swore to included keeping lobbyists out of his administration, providing five days for the public to review pending legislation and a bi-partisan approach to problem-solving. Instead, lobbyists, particularly those representing unions, have freer access to the Oval Office than Michelle and the kids. Not only is the public not given time to digest major legislation, but neither are the legislators. Early on, you may recall, Congress was given less than 24 hours to vote on an 1100-page, trillion dollar, so-called stimulus bill; more recently, when it came to health care, Obama was telling the sheep on Capitol Hill to vote even before an actual bill was written!
So far as bi-partisanship is concerned, the Republicans have been banished to Washington’s equivalent of Siberia. These days, bi-partisanship simply means that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are in agreement.
There is one promise, however, that Obama has kept. He vowed transparency, and anyone who can’t plainly see what the rock star and his left-wing groupies (Axelrod, Emanuel, Jeff Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn) are up to is simply spending too much time watching “American Idol” and college football.
Consider, if you will, the way that Obama has managed to take the spotlight off his attempt to grab control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy that’s devoted to health care and to put the kibosh on conservative talk radio and free access to the Internet. All he had to do was declare war on Fox News. Just like that, the mass media, otherwise known as faux news, turned its attention to the phoniest battle since Gorgeous George and the Super Swedish Angel hung up their wrestling tights.
The way the media carried on, you’d have thought Obama was trying to decide whether to send 40,000 additional troops to fight in Afghanistan or to invade Fox.
On the other hand, it is just possible that Obama’s feud with Fox merely proves that he is as thin-skinned and as vain as some of us have suspected all along, which would fit right in with the narcissism that his constant TV appearances suggests. Not since FDR have we had a president so in love with the sound of his own voice. Not since Jimmy Carter have we had a president so convinced of his own saintliness.
Although Obama is a prime example of egomania, liberals generally hold themselves and one another in such preposterously high regard that normal people -- in other words, conservatives -- can only laugh.
For instance, because liberals are always blathering on about how much they love Mother Nature and how concerned they are about ecology, they are never asked to explain why they are so much better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk. It’s not just the obvious phonies, either -- elitists such as Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who live in mansions and fly around in private jets, leaving carbon footprints the equivalent of fair-sized communities in their wake -- that I have in mind.
I’m also referring to the crowd that showed up in Washington for Obama’s coronation and left our nation’s capitol looking like a pigsty.
I’m thinking of the California Coastal Commission, the folks entrusted with keeping the Golden State’s coastline pristine, but who can always be convinced, for the right price, to come up with a variance.
Another example of ecological hypocrisy involves those young Latinos called taggers and graffiti artists by liberals, vandals and punks by the rest of us. I have actually heard lefties refer to the spray-painted messes these jerks create as native art. But, naturally, they never seem to commission the youthful Rembrandts to come out and decorate their fences, walls and garages.
While on the subject, we shouldn’t overlook the greenies who populate Hollywood and who never once gave George W. Bush a thumbs-up for taking out Saddam Hussein even though his setting fire to the oilfields of Kuwait was the single greatest man-made ecological disaster in history, rivaled only by Adam Sandler’s 30-odd movies.
Finally we come to nature boy himself, Robert Redford. Although I am a free market capitalist and believe that Redford should be allowed to build a ski resort, a giant cell phone tower or even have his head carved out of a mountainside, if he chooses to on his own land, I have to question the environmental bona fides of a guy who creates a film festival in the snow-covered hinterlands of Utah.
I mean, every year, upwards of 50,000 people jet in from all over the world for the Sundance Film Festival. It may be swell for the Utah economy to have all those coke-sniffing, fossil fuel-burning, mugs showing up to watch bad movies and make distribution deals, but if you were really concerned about preserving the environment, wouldn’t it make more sense for these clucks to stay home and watch the movies on their TV sets the way the rest of us do?
In my experience, which consists of watching movies on airplanes, a movie that stinks at sea level reeks just as badly at 30,000 feet. Otherwise, why settle for Utah? It would make far more sense to hold a film festival atop Mt. Everest.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Remember Our Veterans
Burt and Yvonne join the country in honoring our veterans. If you haven't read it recently, we hope you will enjoy The Flag & I. -ed.
Monday, November 9, 2009
A Major Disaster Named Hasan
by Burt Prelutsky
Some friends were trying to convince me that Major Nidal Malik Hasan will surely be executed for conducting his one-man massacre at Fort Hood. I was willing to bet he wouldn’t be. For one thing, why would he be the exception? Sirhan Sirhan wasn’t executed, Charles Manson wasn’t executed, even Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t executed by the state; it took a fellow inmate to dole out justice to a real life Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter.
For another thing, Barack Obama, who had wasted no time denouncing the Cambridge police department as stupid and bigoted when his pal, Prof. Louis Gates, was momentarily inconvenienced, merely cautioned all of us not to jump to any conclusions in this matter. In spite of the fact that Major Hasan was a fellow who made no secret of the fact he was a devout Muslim who had no use for America and had just murdered a number of soldiers, Obama urged us to keep an open mind. At least the President stopped short of calling for a shout-out for the major.
At the same time, the head of Homeland Security, Janet “The Cannibal” Napolitano, was working overtime to guarantee there would be no backlash directed at American Muslims.
Considering that CAIR spouts Islamic propaganda seven days a week and that America’s Muslims, under the guise of supporting charities, funnel funds to Hamas and Hezbollah whenever the FBI isn’t watching, why are we supposed to be so concerned about hurting their feelings? Lest you regard this as mere partisanship, I used to ask the same question when Bush and Condi Rice kept telling us, as if they were proselytizing for Islam, what a wonderful religion it is.
By and large, American Islamics make little or no effort to assimilate into our culture. In fact, as we’ve seen in one honor killing after another, they’ve brought the worst of their “peaceful” religion to our shores. And there’s also the little matter of 9/11. With dozens of Muslim nations scattered all over the globe, places where female mutilation and sharia law are the order of the day, and other religions -- particularly Judaism and Christianity -- are verboten, why the heck do they come here in the first place?
As for Major Hasan, he just proves that the policy of “don’t ask/don’t tell” has been expanded from homosexual soldiers to include Islamic terrorists. The truth is, if the cretins who were fully aware that Hasan was a lethal menace, but let it slide for the sake of political correctness, had been running the military during World War II, they’d have turned a blind eye to a G.I. who was goose-stepping around an army barrack, wearing jackboots and a swastika.
It will be interesting to see if Hasan’s lawyers try to get him off by pleading diminished capacity. I mean, if his beliefs are insane, as I believe they are, what does that say about those hundreds of millions of Muslims who agree with him?
I’m afraid that in the current climate, the best we can hope for is that Major Hasan doesn’t wind up being appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But don’t be too surprised if somewhere down the line, he picks up a Nobel Peace Prize.
Some friends were trying to convince me that Major Nidal Malik Hasan will surely be executed for conducting his one-man massacre at Fort Hood. I was willing to bet he wouldn’t be. For one thing, why would he be the exception? Sirhan Sirhan wasn’t executed, Charles Manson wasn’t executed, even Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t executed by the state; it took a fellow inmate to dole out justice to a real life Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter.
For another thing, Barack Obama, who had wasted no time denouncing the Cambridge police department as stupid and bigoted when his pal, Prof. Louis Gates, was momentarily inconvenienced, merely cautioned all of us not to jump to any conclusions in this matter. In spite of the fact that Major Hasan was a fellow who made no secret of the fact he was a devout Muslim who had no use for America and had just murdered a number of soldiers, Obama urged us to keep an open mind. At least the President stopped short of calling for a shout-out for the major.
At the same time, the head of Homeland Security, Janet “The Cannibal” Napolitano, was working overtime to guarantee there would be no backlash directed at American Muslims.
Considering that CAIR spouts Islamic propaganda seven days a week and that America’s Muslims, under the guise of supporting charities, funnel funds to Hamas and Hezbollah whenever the FBI isn’t watching, why are we supposed to be so concerned about hurting their feelings? Lest you regard this as mere partisanship, I used to ask the same question when Bush and Condi Rice kept telling us, as if they were proselytizing for Islam, what a wonderful religion it is.
By and large, American Islamics make little or no effort to assimilate into our culture. In fact, as we’ve seen in one honor killing after another, they’ve brought the worst of their “peaceful” religion to our shores. And there’s also the little matter of 9/11. With dozens of Muslim nations scattered all over the globe, places where female mutilation and sharia law are the order of the day, and other religions -- particularly Judaism and Christianity -- are verboten, why the heck do they come here in the first place?
As for Major Hasan, he just proves that the policy of “don’t ask/don’t tell” has been expanded from homosexual soldiers to include Islamic terrorists. The truth is, if the cretins who were fully aware that Hasan was a lethal menace, but let it slide for the sake of political correctness, had been running the military during World War II, they’d have turned a blind eye to a G.I. who was goose-stepping around an army barrack, wearing jackboots and a swastika.
It will be interesting to see if Hasan’s lawyers try to get him off by pleading diminished capacity. I mean, if his beliefs are insane, as I believe they are, what does that say about those hundreds of millions of Muslims who agree with him?
I’m afraid that in the current climate, the best we can hope for is that Major Hasan doesn’t wind up being appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But don’t be too surprised if somewhere down the line, he picks up a Nobel Peace Prize.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Mother Nature And The Left
by Burt Prelutsky
When Barack Obama was campaigning -- not that he’s ever stopped -- back in 2008, he made a number of promises. As we all know, like a cad on the make, he was only trying to get us in the sack. Once he had his way with us, he barely remembered our name, let alone his various vows.
Some of the things he swore to included keeping lobbyists out of his administration, providing five days for the public to review pending legislation and a bi-partisan approach to problem-solving. Instead, lobbyists, particularly those representing unions, have freer access to the Oval Office than Michelle and the kids. Not only is the public not given time to digest major legislation, but neither are the legislators. Early on, you may recall, Congress was given less than 24 hours to vote on an 1100-page, trillion dollar, so-called stimulus bill; more recently, when it came to health care, Obama was telling the sheep on Capitol Hill to vote even before an actual bill was written!
So far as bi-partisanship is concerned, the Republicans have been banished to Washington’s equivalent of Siberia. These days, bi-partisanship simply means that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are in agreement.
There is one promise, however, that Obama has kept. He vowed transparency, and anyone who can’t plainly see what the rock star and his left-wing groupies (Axelrod, Emanuel, Jeff Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn) are up to is simply spending too much time watching “American Idol” and college football.
Consider, if you will, the way that Obama has managed to take the spotlight off his attempt to grab control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy that’s devoted to health care and to put the kibosh on conservative talk radio and free access to the Internet. All he had to do was declare war on Fox News. Just like that, the mass media, otherwise known as faux news, turned its attention to the phoniest battle since Gorgeous George and the Super Swedish Angel hung up their wrestling tights.
The way the media carried on, you’d have thought Obama was trying to decide whether to send 40,000 additional troops to fight in Afghanistan or to invade Fox.
On the other hand, it is just possible that Obama’s feud with Fox merely proves that he is as thin-skinned and as vain as some of us have suspected all along, which would fit right in with the narcissism that his constant TV appearances suggests. Not since FDR have we had a president so in love with the sound of his own voice. Not since Jimmy Carter have we had a president so convinced of his own saintliness.
Although Obama is a prime example of egomania, liberals generally hold themselves and one another in such preposterously high regard that normal people -- in other words, conservatives -- can only laugh.
For instance, because liberals are always blathering on about how much they love Mother Nature and how concerned they are about ecology, they are never asked to explain why they are so much better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk. It’s not just the obvious phonies, either -- elitists such as Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who live in mansions and fly around in private jets, leaving carbon footprints the equivalent of fair-sized communities in their wake -- that I have in mind.
I’m also referring to the crowd that showed up in Washington for Obama’s coronation and left our nation’s capitol looking like a pigsty.
I’m thinking of the California Coastal Commission, the folks entrusted with keeping the Golden State’s coastline pristine, but who can always be convinced, for the right price, to come up with a variance.
Another example of ecological hypocrisy involves those young Latinos called taggers and graffiti artists by liberals, vandals and punks by the rest of us. I have actually heard lefties refer to the spray-painted messes these jerks create as native art. But, naturally, they never seem to commission the youthful Rembrandts to come out and decorate their fences, walls and garages.
While on the subject, we shouldn’t overlook the greenies who populate Hollywood and who never once gave George W. Bush a thumbs-up for taking out Saddam Hussein even though his setting fire to the oilfields of Kuwait was the single greatest man-made ecological disaster in history, rivaled only by Adam Sandler’s 30-odd movies.
Finally we come to nature boy himself, Robert Redford. Although I am a free market capitalist and believe that Redford should be allowed to build a ski resort, a giant cell phone tower or even have his head carved out of a mountainside, if he chooses to on his own land, I have to question the environmental bona fides of a guy who creates a film festival in the snow-covered hinterlands of Utah.
I mean, every year, upwards of 50,000 people jet in from all over the world for the Sundance Film Festival. It may be swell for the Utah economy to have all those coke-sniffing, fossil fuel-burning, mugs showing up to watch bad movies and make distribution deals, but if you were really concerned about preserving the environment, wouldn’t it make more sense for these clucks to stay home and watch the movies on their TV sets the way the rest of us do?
In my experience, which consists of watching movies on airplanes, a movie that stinks at sea level reeks just as badly at 30,000 feet. Otherwise, why settle for Utah? It would make far more sense to hold a film festival atop Mt. Everest.
When Barack Obama was campaigning -- not that he’s ever stopped -- back in 2008, he made a number of promises. As we all know, like a cad on the make, he was only trying to get us in the sack. Once he had his way with us, he barely remembered our name, let alone his various vows.
Some of the things he swore to included keeping lobbyists out of his administration, providing five days for the public to review pending legislation and a bi-partisan approach to problem-solving. Instead, lobbyists, particularly those representing unions, have freer access to the Oval Office than Michelle and the kids. Not only is the public not given time to digest major legislation, but neither are the legislators. Early on, you may recall, Congress was given less than 24 hours to vote on an 1100-page, trillion dollar, so-called stimulus bill; more recently, when it came to health care, Obama was telling the sheep on Capitol Hill to vote even before an actual bill was written!
So far as bi-partisanship is concerned, the Republicans have been banished to Washington’s equivalent of Siberia. These days, bi-partisanship simply means that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are in agreement.
There is one promise, however, that Obama has kept. He vowed transparency, and anyone who can’t plainly see what the rock star and his left-wing groupies (Axelrod, Emanuel, Jeff Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn) are up to is simply spending too much time watching “American Idol” and college football.
Consider, if you will, the way that Obama has managed to take the spotlight off his attempt to grab control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy that’s devoted to health care and to put the kibosh on conservative talk radio and free access to the Internet. All he had to do was declare war on Fox News. Just like that, the mass media, otherwise known as faux news, turned its attention to the phoniest battle since Gorgeous George and the Super Swedish Angel hung up their wrestling tights.
The way the media carried on, you’d have thought Obama was trying to decide whether to send 40,000 additional troops to fight in Afghanistan or to invade Fox.
On the other hand, it is just possible that Obama’s feud with Fox merely proves that he is as thin-skinned and as vain as some of us have suspected all along, which would fit right in with the narcissism that his constant TV appearances suggests. Not since FDR have we had a president so in love with the sound of his own voice. Not since Jimmy Carter have we had a president so convinced of his own saintliness.
Although Obama is a prime example of egomania, liberals generally hold themselves and one another in such preposterously high regard that normal people -- in other words, conservatives -- can only laugh.
For instance, because liberals are always blathering on about how much they love Mother Nature and how concerned they are about ecology, they are never asked to explain why they are so much better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk. It’s not just the obvious phonies, either -- elitists such as Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who live in mansions and fly around in private jets, leaving carbon footprints the equivalent of fair-sized communities in their wake -- that I have in mind.
I’m also referring to the crowd that showed up in Washington for Obama’s coronation and left our nation’s capitol looking like a pigsty.
I’m thinking of the California Coastal Commission, the folks entrusted with keeping the Golden State’s coastline pristine, but who can always be convinced, for the right price, to come up with a variance.
Another example of ecological hypocrisy involves those young Latinos called taggers and graffiti artists by liberals, vandals and punks by the rest of us. I have actually heard lefties refer to the spray-painted messes these jerks create as native art. But, naturally, they never seem to commission the youthful Rembrandts to come out and decorate their fences, walls and garages.
While on the subject, we shouldn’t overlook the greenies who populate Hollywood and who never once gave George W. Bush a thumbs-up for taking out Saddam Hussein even though his setting fire to the oilfields of Kuwait was the single greatest man-made ecological disaster in history, rivaled only by Adam Sandler’s 30-odd movies.
Finally we come to nature boy himself, Robert Redford. Although I am a free market capitalist and believe that Redford should be allowed to build a ski resort, a giant cell phone tower or even have his head carved out of a mountainside, if he chooses to on his own land, I have to question the environmental bona fides of a guy who creates a film festival in the snow-covered hinterlands of Utah.
I mean, every year, upwards of 50,000 people jet in from all over the world for the Sundance Film Festival. It may be swell for the Utah economy to have all those coke-sniffing, fossil fuel-burning, mugs showing up to watch bad movies and make distribution deals, but if you were really concerned about preserving the environment, wouldn’t it make more sense for these clucks to stay home and watch the movies on their TV sets the way the rest of us do?
In my experience, which consists of watching movies on airplanes, a movie that stinks at sea level reeks just as badly at 30,000 feet. Otherwise, why settle for Utah? It would make far more sense to hold a film festival atop Mt. Everest.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The Inmates Are Running The Asylum
by Burt Prelutsky
When I first began blogging five or six years ago, I wondered how many pieces I would write before running dry. I needn’t have worried. I have now written close to 700, but in this age of lunacy, I’m far likelier to lose my typing skills than to run out of topics, or perhaps I should say targets.
For instance, take the stock market. Many people seem to regard it as a legitimate indicator of the nation’s economy. But inasmuch as it has been moving up slowly but steadily ever since Barack Obama took office, I have to wonder what it is about a failing dollar, a record deficit and a 10% rate of unemployment that makes Wall Street so doggone bullish. Frankly, when evaluating the sorry state of our economy, I think it makes more sense to rely on the reading of tea leaves and animal entrails.
I recall once reading that between one gig and another, Hugh Downs had spent more hours on TV than any other human being. I don’t have any idea if Ed McMahon or Regis Philbin or someone else ever surpassed his total, but I suspect that Barack Obama just might claim the record as early as next weekend. Is it possible that by now even his most devoted fans haven’t had their fill of him?
In the wake of Obama’s collecting the goofy Peace Prize, for which he was nominated within 11 days of his taking office -- for perhaps moving his mother-in-law into the White House -- he has become something of a worldwide punchline. Even the New York Times and Saturday Night Live have taken a crack at him. There’s even a rumor floating around that Joe Biden has begun telling Barack Obama jokes.
Speaking of rumors, I’ve heard that the President will next win the Heisman Trophy for having watched a college football game on TV, and I have started one of my own predicting he will win the Cy Young Award for having tossed out the first ball at the All Star Game.
Then there’s the theatrical event recently staged at the White House, which should make us question whether there’s anything about this administration that anyone but a card-carrying Obama groupie can believe. I refer to the white coats Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod had passed out to the doctors who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, decided to support Obamacare. Were they all veterinarians? Or perhaps they were a group of those pretentious Ph.Ds from the Ivy League who insist on being addressed as Doctor, even though they can’t set a broken leg or prescribe aspirins.
Is it possible that old TV commercial will be revised so that a distinguished-looking fellow in a white smock will admit, “I’m not really a doctor, but I played one at the White House”?
Next, we come to those liberals who insist that anyone who opposes Obamacare; the trillion dollar stimulus package; his energy bill; the gobbling up of GM, Chrysler and various financial institutions; his ties to the UAW, ACORN and the SEIU; his surrounding himself with self-proclaimed radicals; or who even takes exception to the First Lady’s flaunting of her biceps; is a racist. Even if, as a conservative, you respect and admire the likes of Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Clarence Thomas, all of whom are 50% blacker than President Obama, you are labeled a Klan member.
In fact, even if, by God, you voted for Barack Obama in 2008, believing, in spite of all the evidence, that he was a centrist, only to change your mind in 2009, after watching him blow trillions of your tax dollars on his pet pork projects, you might just as well be toting a lynch rope.
By this time, I don’t think you even have to be a conservative to recognize that the Democrats are like the foolish boy who cried “Wolf!” Unlike the little shepherd, they cry “Racist!” but, just like him, they’ve done it once too often.
Finally, we have yet another fine example of why liberals should not ever be in charge of anything -- not Congress, not the White House, not the military and certainly not public education. In fact, I believe that parents who keep their kids in public schools when they can afford to send them to private or parochial schools, should be arrested for child abuse.
In case you happened to miss the story, Zachary Christie, age 6, was so proud of joining the Cub Scouts that he brought his camping utensil, a combination fork, knife and spoon, to school, intending to use it at lunchtime. But he hadn’t taken into account the knuckleheaded administrators running the Christina School District of Newark, Delaware.
For violating the zero-tolerance policy regarding “weapons,” young Dillinger was not only kicked out of his grammar school, but faces 45 days of detention in reform school.
Last year, you might recall, a third grader in Delaware was booted out of school because her grandmother sent her to class with a birthday cake, along with a knife for cutting it. One can only hope that Granny then baked her a second cake with a file in it so she could manage to bust out of jail.
Some of us have long been puzzled how a dunce like Delaware’s Joe Biden could keep getting re-elected to the U.S. Senate.
Well, we can stop wondering. That mystery has been solved.
According to Zachary’s parents, the boy takes school so seriously that he sometimes insists on wearing a suit and tie to class. Now, however, it seems he’s afraid he’ll be teased because he’s gotten into trouble. I just hope somebody tells this six-year-old that if he hasn’t been ribbed over the suit and tie, he has very broad-minded schoolmates and probably has nothing to worry about.
But, what’s the world coming to when a nice little boy gets into hot water for taking a Cub Scout tool to class so he can be the cool kid eating soup with his own personal spoon, but nobody thinks a thing about it when Henry Waxman or Barney Frank gets anywhere near a microphone or Barack Obama gets within 50 feet of a Teleprompter.
When I first began blogging five or six years ago, I wondered how many pieces I would write before running dry. I needn’t have worried. I have now written close to 700, but in this age of lunacy, I’m far likelier to lose my typing skills than to run out of topics, or perhaps I should say targets.
For instance, take the stock market. Many people seem to regard it as a legitimate indicator of the nation’s economy. But inasmuch as it has been moving up slowly but steadily ever since Barack Obama took office, I have to wonder what it is about a failing dollar, a record deficit and a 10% rate of unemployment that makes Wall Street so doggone bullish. Frankly, when evaluating the sorry state of our economy, I think it makes more sense to rely on the reading of tea leaves and animal entrails.
I recall once reading that between one gig and another, Hugh Downs had spent more hours on TV than any other human being. I don’t have any idea if Ed McMahon or Regis Philbin or someone else ever surpassed his total, but I suspect that Barack Obama just might claim the record as early as next weekend. Is it possible that by now even his most devoted fans haven’t had their fill of him?
In the wake of Obama’s collecting the goofy Peace Prize, for which he was nominated within 11 days of his taking office -- for perhaps moving his mother-in-law into the White House -- he has become something of a worldwide punchline. Even the New York Times and Saturday Night Live have taken a crack at him. There’s even a rumor floating around that Joe Biden has begun telling Barack Obama jokes.
Speaking of rumors, I’ve heard that the President will next win the Heisman Trophy for having watched a college football game on TV, and I have started one of my own predicting he will win the Cy Young Award for having tossed out the first ball at the All Star Game.
Then there’s the theatrical event recently staged at the White House, which should make us question whether there’s anything about this administration that anyone but a card-carrying Obama groupie can believe. I refer to the white coats Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod had passed out to the doctors who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, decided to support Obamacare. Were they all veterinarians? Or perhaps they were a group of those pretentious Ph.Ds from the Ivy League who insist on being addressed as Doctor, even though they can’t set a broken leg or prescribe aspirins.
Is it possible that old TV commercial will be revised so that a distinguished-looking fellow in a white smock will admit, “I’m not really a doctor, but I played one at the White House”?
Next, we come to those liberals who insist that anyone who opposes Obamacare; the trillion dollar stimulus package; his energy bill; the gobbling up of GM, Chrysler and various financial institutions; his ties to the UAW, ACORN and the SEIU; his surrounding himself with self-proclaimed radicals; or who even takes exception to the First Lady’s flaunting of her biceps; is a racist. Even if, as a conservative, you respect and admire the likes of Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Clarence Thomas, all of whom are 50% blacker than President Obama, you are labeled a Klan member.
In fact, even if, by God, you voted for Barack Obama in 2008, believing, in spite of all the evidence, that he was a centrist, only to change your mind in 2009, after watching him blow trillions of your tax dollars on his pet pork projects, you might just as well be toting a lynch rope.
By this time, I don’t think you even have to be a conservative to recognize that the Democrats are like the foolish boy who cried “Wolf!” Unlike the little shepherd, they cry “Racist!” but, just like him, they’ve done it once too often.
Finally, we have yet another fine example of why liberals should not ever be in charge of anything -- not Congress, not the White House, not the military and certainly not public education. In fact, I believe that parents who keep their kids in public schools when they can afford to send them to private or parochial schools, should be arrested for child abuse.
In case you happened to miss the story, Zachary Christie, age 6, was so proud of joining the Cub Scouts that he brought his camping utensil, a combination fork, knife and spoon, to school, intending to use it at lunchtime. But he hadn’t taken into account the knuckleheaded administrators running the Christina School District of Newark, Delaware.
For violating the zero-tolerance policy regarding “weapons,” young Dillinger was not only kicked out of his grammar school, but faces 45 days of detention in reform school.
Last year, you might recall, a third grader in Delaware was booted out of school because her grandmother sent her to class with a birthday cake, along with a knife for cutting it. One can only hope that Granny then baked her a second cake with a file in it so she could manage to bust out of jail.
Some of us have long been puzzled how a dunce like Delaware’s Joe Biden could keep getting re-elected to the U.S. Senate.
Well, we can stop wondering. That mystery has been solved.
According to Zachary’s parents, the boy takes school so seriously that he sometimes insists on wearing a suit and tie to class. Now, however, it seems he’s afraid he’ll be teased because he’s gotten into trouble. I just hope somebody tells this six-year-old that if he hasn’t been ribbed over the suit and tie, he has very broad-minded schoolmates and probably has nothing to worry about.
But, what’s the world coming to when a nice little boy gets into hot water for taking a Cub Scout tool to class so he can be the cool kid eating soup with his own personal spoon, but nobody thinks a thing about it when Henry Waxman or Barney Frank gets anywhere near a microphone or Barack Obama gets within 50 feet of a Teleprompter.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Let's Call It "Infirmative Action"
by Burt Prelutsky
My wife and friends often find it bizarre that I answer every e-mail I receive from my readers, including those who merely write to insult me. On occasion, even I, not being a masochist, have asked myself why I do it. There are a couple of reasons. The first is common courtesy. I figure if someone has taken the time to write, the least I can do is respond. I do permit myself to cut off communication if by the third exchange I haven’t persuaded them to stop calling me a racist, a fascist or a moron. Insulting me is one thing, but boring me is quite another.
My second reason, though, isn’t even slightly altruistic. I have found, at least once in a great while, that in the process of trying to explain my position on a specific issue to a really stupid person, I am compelled to clarify my own thinking. And when I say a really stupid person, I am naturally referring to a typical liberal.
So it was the other week when a reader, a black woman we’ll call Ms. D, took me to task for an article in which I not only shared my uncensored feelings about the Obamas, but also took the opportunity to attack Affirmative Action.
She opened with a question: “Why do you assume that any acceptance of non-whites into educational institutions is due to Affirmative Action? What you’re saying by making that assumption is that non-whites couldn’t possibly have gotten into Ivy League schools on their own merits. Some non-whites don’t even indicate their ethnicity for this very reason. Even if one is accepted because of A.A., he/she has to work twice as hard to prove himself. Nor can A.A. be credited for non-whites who successfully complete their academic careers.”
I replied: “I wish you would just say blacks instead of non-whites. After all, Asians are non-whites and they don’t receive or require Affirmative Action. Next, I never said that blacks never get into good schools on their own merits. It’s liberals who say that and believe it. Otherwise, there would be no such policy. You don’t see it in play for Asians. But, then, 50% of Asians don’t drop out of college without getting their diplomas.”
“When,” Ms. D went on, “did Mrs. Obama ever say that America was a mean country, as you claimed she did?”
“She said it in one of her speeches during the campaign. It was around the same time that she admitted that until her husband ran for president she’d never been proud of our country.”
“You misquoted her. She said that for the first time, she was really proud of her country. The context of the statement being that America had looked beyond color for a change.”
“Lady, if you want America to look beyond color, why aren’t you opposed to Affirmative Action?”
"When did America start using Affirmative Action to elect its presidents?”
“As non sequiturs go, that’s a doozy. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I do find it ironic that Obama billed himself as the first post-racial candidate.”
“Why is that ironic?”
“Well, it’s one thing for him to get 90% of the black vote in the general election inasmuch as blacks will give 90% of their votes to any Democrat even if, like Robert Byrd, he was once a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan. But why would 90% of blacks vote for Obama over such a devout liberal as Sen. Clinton in the primaries except that Obama was 50% blacker than Hillary? So why is it you think that whites should look beyond color when it’s so obvious that most blacks don’t?”
“Even if Affirmative Action was why Michelle Obama was accepted into schools, should that mean that she can’t acknowledge or be cognizant of racial and other societal ills in America? Should non-whites do a step and fetch jig and say thanks Massa for dis here opportunity? I owes everything to you for my success. Are you saying that Affirmative Action is to cover up or excuse racial problems?”
“Affirmative Action should be called White Guilt in Action. If you don’t object to having your entire race patronized, I guess I shouldn’t mind. The only reason I do is because in order to make room for black underachievers who haven’t done the work and earned their way into colleges and universities, Asian students are being discriminated against. Too many blacks who say they only want a level playing field are lying through their teeth.”
“The success of those blacks you mentioned in your article in no way proves that we are not a racist society. Not when whites still rule America in every sector.”
“Hey, wake up, lady! There are only about 40 million blacks in a country of 300 million. At the rate things are going, Latinos may soon be in charge, but since when do 40 million people get to rule 260 million?”
“Not when most black males in America know what it’s like to be pulled over for no other reason than DWB, Driving While Black. Oh, that’s right -- all black men are drug-dealing gangbangers, so that’s probably why they’re profiled.”
“I don’t want to sound too condescending, but you should probably leave sarcasm to the professionals. I’m not black, but I was stopped by cops any number of times when I was young. When I first began driving at 16, I looked like I was 13 or 14. Then, when I was at UCLA and began riding a motorcycle, I was pulled over on a regular basis, especially when I was working late at the Daily Bruin or on the humor magazine. The problem was that I had to ride through Beverly Hills to get home, and Beverly Hills cops are particularly alert to suspicious characters. Somehow, though, I managed to survive the trauma with my manhood intact. I guess it did help that I wasn’t using or peddling drugs. Yes, Ms. D, it’s shocking but true that a lot of young black men actually traffic in illegal substances. Some black people are outraged that, in spite of Affirmative Action, more black men go to jail than go to college, as if that’s the fault of white society. Don’t you find it the least bit embarrassing that blacks blame whites for their problems with the same regularity that Democrats blame George Bush for the present mess in Washington?”
Ignoring my words as usual, Ms. D steamed ahead: “In your response to your critics, you never addressed whether or not you are indeed a racist. Do you in fact believe that non-whites are to conduct themselves by some societal code or standards determined by whites?”
“I believe that everyone in America should abide by a code of decent behavior. Walking around with a chip on your shoulder just because you’re black and whiny isn’t going to gain you the respect you obviously crave. At most, you’ll have to settle for contempt and handouts from politicians looking to lock up your votes.”
“You use a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. Do you hate non-whites or not? As evil as white supremacists are, at least one knows where they stand and what they believe about people that are not like them. Where do you stand?”
“I have always said that anyone who hates another person because of his race, religion or national origin, is just a lazy so-and-so because the chances are that if you simply make the effort to know him as an individual, you’ll come up with a much better reason to despise him. That being said, I don’t think you really care where I stand or will believe what I say, even though I have no reason to lie to you, seeing as I’m not running for office. But since you asked, I like people who play by the rules and who don’t think they’re entitled to a free ride or a lot of perks just because their great-great-great-great-grandparents happened to have been slaves. You’re not a slave, but you certainly sound like one. If I were you, I’d detest slavery, just as I and most other Americans do. But just as a certain black New York Times reporter confessed some years ago, I’d personally be grateful that as a result of that terrible evil, I was lucky enough to have been born in a country where one’s intelligence, drive and perseverance, are the only things limiting what any American can achieve. Sincerely, Burt Prelutsky.”
My wife and friends often find it bizarre that I answer every e-mail I receive from my readers, including those who merely write to insult me. On occasion, even I, not being a masochist, have asked myself why I do it. There are a couple of reasons. The first is common courtesy. I figure if someone has taken the time to write, the least I can do is respond. I do permit myself to cut off communication if by the third exchange I haven’t persuaded them to stop calling me a racist, a fascist or a moron. Insulting me is one thing, but boring me is quite another.
My second reason, though, isn’t even slightly altruistic. I have found, at least once in a great while, that in the process of trying to explain my position on a specific issue to a really stupid person, I am compelled to clarify my own thinking. And when I say a really stupid person, I am naturally referring to a typical liberal.
So it was the other week when a reader, a black woman we’ll call Ms. D, took me to task for an article in which I not only shared my uncensored feelings about the Obamas, but also took the opportunity to attack Affirmative Action.
She opened with a question: “Why do you assume that any acceptance of non-whites into educational institutions is due to Affirmative Action? What you’re saying by making that assumption is that non-whites couldn’t possibly have gotten into Ivy League schools on their own merits. Some non-whites don’t even indicate their ethnicity for this very reason. Even if one is accepted because of A.A., he/she has to work twice as hard to prove himself. Nor can A.A. be credited for non-whites who successfully complete their academic careers.”
I replied: “I wish you would just say blacks instead of non-whites. After all, Asians are non-whites and they don’t receive or require Affirmative Action. Next, I never said that blacks never get into good schools on their own merits. It’s liberals who say that and believe it. Otherwise, there would be no such policy. You don’t see it in play for Asians. But, then, 50% of Asians don’t drop out of college without getting their diplomas.”
“When,” Ms. D went on, “did Mrs. Obama ever say that America was a mean country, as you claimed she did?”
“She said it in one of her speeches during the campaign. It was around the same time that she admitted that until her husband ran for president she’d never been proud of our country.”
“You misquoted her. She said that for the first time, she was really proud of her country. The context of the statement being that America had looked beyond color for a change.”
“Lady, if you want America to look beyond color, why aren’t you opposed to Affirmative Action?”
"When did America start using Affirmative Action to elect its presidents?”
“As non sequiturs go, that’s a doozy. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I do find it ironic that Obama billed himself as the first post-racial candidate.”
“Why is that ironic?”
“Well, it’s one thing for him to get 90% of the black vote in the general election inasmuch as blacks will give 90% of their votes to any Democrat even if, like Robert Byrd, he was once a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan. But why would 90% of blacks vote for Obama over such a devout liberal as Sen. Clinton in the primaries except that Obama was 50% blacker than Hillary? So why is it you think that whites should look beyond color when it’s so obvious that most blacks don’t?”
“Even if Affirmative Action was why Michelle Obama was accepted into schools, should that mean that she can’t acknowledge or be cognizant of racial and other societal ills in America? Should non-whites do a step and fetch jig and say thanks Massa for dis here opportunity? I owes everything to you for my success. Are you saying that Affirmative Action is to cover up or excuse racial problems?”
“Affirmative Action should be called White Guilt in Action. If you don’t object to having your entire race patronized, I guess I shouldn’t mind. The only reason I do is because in order to make room for black underachievers who haven’t done the work and earned their way into colleges and universities, Asian students are being discriminated against. Too many blacks who say they only want a level playing field are lying through their teeth.”
“The success of those blacks you mentioned in your article in no way proves that we are not a racist society. Not when whites still rule America in every sector.”
“Hey, wake up, lady! There are only about 40 million blacks in a country of 300 million. At the rate things are going, Latinos may soon be in charge, but since when do 40 million people get to rule 260 million?”
“Not when most black males in America know what it’s like to be pulled over for no other reason than DWB, Driving While Black. Oh, that’s right -- all black men are drug-dealing gangbangers, so that’s probably why they’re profiled.”
“I don’t want to sound too condescending, but you should probably leave sarcasm to the professionals. I’m not black, but I was stopped by cops any number of times when I was young. When I first began driving at 16, I looked like I was 13 or 14. Then, when I was at UCLA and began riding a motorcycle, I was pulled over on a regular basis, especially when I was working late at the Daily Bruin or on the humor magazine. The problem was that I had to ride through Beverly Hills to get home, and Beverly Hills cops are particularly alert to suspicious characters. Somehow, though, I managed to survive the trauma with my manhood intact. I guess it did help that I wasn’t using or peddling drugs. Yes, Ms. D, it’s shocking but true that a lot of young black men actually traffic in illegal substances. Some black people are outraged that, in spite of Affirmative Action, more black men go to jail than go to college, as if that’s the fault of white society. Don’t you find it the least bit embarrassing that blacks blame whites for their problems with the same regularity that Democrats blame George Bush for the present mess in Washington?”
Ignoring my words as usual, Ms. D steamed ahead: “In your response to your critics, you never addressed whether or not you are indeed a racist. Do you in fact believe that non-whites are to conduct themselves by some societal code or standards determined by whites?”
“I believe that everyone in America should abide by a code of decent behavior. Walking around with a chip on your shoulder just because you’re black and whiny isn’t going to gain you the respect you obviously crave. At most, you’ll have to settle for contempt and handouts from politicians looking to lock up your votes.”
“You use a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. Do you hate non-whites or not? As evil as white supremacists are, at least one knows where they stand and what they believe about people that are not like them. Where do you stand?”
“I have always said that anyone who hates another person because of his race, religion or national origin, is just a lazy so-and-so because the chances are that if you simply make the effort to know him as an individual, you’ll come up with a much better reason to despise him. That being said, I don’t think you really care where I stand or will believe what I say, even though I have no reason to lie to you, seeing as I’m not running for office. But since you asked, I like people who play by the rules and who don’t think they’re entitled to a free ride or a lot of perks just because their great-great-great-great-grandparents happened to have been slaves. You’re not a slave, but you certainly sound like one. If I were you, I’d detest slavery, just as I and most other Americans do. But just as a certain black New York Times reporter confessed some years ago, I’d personally be grateful that as a result of that terrible evil, I was lucky enough to have been born in a country where one’s intelligence, drive and perseverance, are the only things limiting what any American can achieve. Sincerely, Burt Prelutsky.”
Friday, October 30, 2009
Questions Even Glenn Beck Hasn't Asked
by Burt Prelutsky
I have a few questions on my mind and, judging by the questions asked by the likes of George Stephanopoulos, David Letterman and the mainstream media, if I don’t ask them, there’s a very good chance that nobody else will.
First off, I’d like to know why the 535 members of Congress have to congregate in Washington, D.C. As Dick Morris and Eileen McGann made perfectly clear in “Fleeced,” they don’t do very much in the nation’s capitol that they couldn’t do just as well or just as badly if they stayed home in their bathrobes. Half the time, the sessions are devoted to naming post offices and other equally earth-shattering events.
So far as I can tell, the actual motives are to allow senators and representatives to have fiefdoms both in Washington and in their own state or district; to make things more convenient for lobbyists – one-stop shopping, as it were; and to keep our representatives as far away as possible from their constituents.
I keep hearing commercials for teleconferencing systems and I think they’re worth a try. With my plan, there is even an advantage for the politicians because they wouldn’t have to waste time and money flying back and forth. What’s more, they wouldn’t have to spend all that extra dough sending their kids to private schools, thus ensuring that their offspring be spared having to attend public schools in Washington, D.C. You know, those schools that politicians are always raving about when they’re out seeking campaign contributions from the Teacher’s Union, the ones where liberal candidates pose for photo ops during presidential campaigns.
My second question is how it was that of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, only 24 were lawyers or jurists, but of the current 100 senators, 60 are lawyers? While it’s true that there are slightly more than a million lawyers in America, that is less than one percent of the adult population. So how is it that 60% of the U.S. Senate and slightly over 30% of the House members, in addition to their party affiliation, are entitled to put Esq. after their name?
I believe the problem is two-fold. One, it’s just too easy and too much fun being a politician; two, it’s just too hard and not enough fun being a lawyer. If people enjoyed being lawyers more, they wouldn’t be so darn eager to run off to Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. Frankly, I don’t know how to make the practice of law a more exciting career. So, instead, I think it behooves us to come up with ways to make politics a less attractive option. The one notion that popped into my head was to take a leaf out of the Aztec playbook and initiate human sacrifices. Would any of us really have strong objections to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Arlen Spector, Susan Collins, Henry Waxman, Charles Schumer, Olympia Snowe, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, being offered up to pacify the angry spirits of the Founding Fathers?
My final question is, why, in 2009 America, are mulattoes invariably identified as blacks? Surely there is nothing wrong with being a mulatto. There is no stigma attached, as once there was. It merely refers to those who have one white parent and one black. There are many notable individuals who are mulattoes, including Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, Lisa Bonet and Barack Obama. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is a true amalgamation, being one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter black, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch. And, yet, with the possible exception of the New York Yankee shortstop, we insist on identifying all of them as black.
It’s as if there is something shameful about their being half or even one-eighth white. If there is, I’d sure like to know what it is. If, on the other hand, there isn’t, why do we insist on acting as if there were?
I have a few questions on my mind and, judging by the questions asked by the likes of George Stephanopoulos, David Letterman and the mainstream media, if I don’t ask them, there’s a very good chance that nobody else will.
First off, I’d like to know why the 535 members of Congress have to congregate in Washington, D.C. As Dick Morris and Eileen McGann made perfectly clear in “Fleeced,” they don’t do very much in the nation’s capitol that they couldn’t do just as well or just as badly if they stayed home in their bathrobes. Half the time, the sessions are devoted to naming post offices and other equally earth-shattering events.
So far as I can tell, the actual motives are to allow senators and representatives to have fiefdoms both in Washington and in their own state or district; to make things more convenient for lobbyists – one-stop shopping, as it were; and to keep our representatives as far away as possible from their constituents.
I keep hearing commercials for teleconferencing systems and I think they’re worth a try. With my plan, there is even an advantage for the politicians because they wouldn’t have to waste time and money flying back and forth. What’s more, they wouldn’t have to spend all that extra dough sending their kids to private schools, thus ensuring that their offspring be spared having to attend public schools in Washington, D.C. You know, those schools that politicians are always raving about when they’re out seeking campaign contributions from the Teacher’s Union, the ones where liberal candidates pose for photo ops during presidential campaigns.
My second question is how it was that of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, only 24 were lawyers or jurists, but of the current 100 senators, 60 are lawyers? While it’s true that there are slightly more than a million lawyers in America, that is less than one percent of the adult population. So how is it that 60% of the U.S. Senate and slightly over 30% of the House members, in addition to their party affiliation, are entitled to put Esq. after their name?
I believe the problem is two-fold. One, it’s just too easy and too much fun being a politician; two, it’s just too hard and not enough fun being a lawyer. If people enjoyed being lawyers more, they wouldn’t be so darn eager to run off to Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. Frankly, I don’t know how to make the practice of law a more exciting career. So, instead, I think it behooves us to come up with ways to make politics a less attractive option. The one notion that popped into my head was to take a leaf out of the Aztec playbook and initiate human sacrifices. Would any of us really have strong objections to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Arlen Spector, Susan Collins, Henry Waxman, Charles Schumer, Olympia Snowe, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, being offered up to pacify the angry spirits of the Founding Fathers?
My final question is, why, in 2009 America, are mulattoes invariably identified as blacks? Surely there is nothing wrong with being a mulatto. There is no stigma attached, as once there was. It merely refers to those who have one white parent and one black. There are many notable individuals who are mulattoes, including Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, Lisa Bonet and Barack Obama. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is a true amalgamation, being one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter black, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch. And, yet, with the possible exception of the New York Yankee shortstop, we insist on identifying all of them as black.
It’s as if there is something shameful about their being half or even one-eighth white. If there is, I’d sure like to know what it is. If, on the other hand, there isn’t, why do we insist on acting as if there were?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Waxman Responds
by Burt Prelutsky
A while ago, I wrote a piece titled “Blowing the Whistle on Waxman.” In case you missed it, I explained that Henry Waxman and I had been friends beginning almost 50 years ago at UCLA. I also said that we had seen each infrequently over the intervening years once he went to Sacramento as a state assemblyman and later to Washington as a member of Congress.
Over the years, I moved politically from left to right, while Henry moved from left to far left to over the edge. Still, I had a soft spot for him and, as a result, refrained from including his name when I would list the usual suspects, those left-wingers like Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Boxer and Murtha, who were doing their utmost to destroy America.
However, once Obama was elected and began pushing his radical agenda, while simultaneously surrounding himself with advisors who should never have been allowed within a mile of the White House, and who, for the most part, belonged either in jail or an asylum, Henry began feeling his oats. Suddenly, with the Democrats in control of the House, he was no longer a back-bencher. He even got to have his name on a piece of major legislation, the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill, a singular disaster that would send all of our energy costs soaring while simultaneously providing China and India with a tremendous advantage over what remains of our industrial industry.
That was bad enough, but even after those notorious ACORN videos aired on Glenn Beck’s TV show, Waxman and 74 of his left-wing cronies on Capitol Hill voted to continue funding ACORN, and that cut the Gordian knot for me. At that point, even old school ties weren’t enough to dissuade me, and, in a very sad frame of mind, I wrote the article.
An hour or so after it was posted, I received an email from Waxman’s office in Washington. It began: “Dear Burt, I can understand that we have disagreements about politics. I can see that you have some embarrassment about our past friendship, but you are not responsible for me and I am not (thank G-d) responsible for your views or actions. But I do resent that whatever I may have said to you in a conversation years ago is now being dredged up (and maybe made up) to make me look bad. I never thought I had to remember things I may have said to you to be provocative at the time, would be repeated and distorted, as if it were ‘on the record.’
(Note: Just for the record, I made up nothing and I distorted nothing. What I said he said about the steroid-using baseball players he called before his committee was exactly what he said; namely that he had no idea they were even famous until he saw his fellow congressmen lining up for their autographs; and, in response to a question I posed strictly out of curiosity, replied that he had no idea how long after an athlete stopped using steroids, they would continue to show up in drug tests. Besides, neither of those statements is particularly provocative. They merely indicate how unqualified and unaware a congressman can be and still feel himself entitled to sit in judgment of other people. The other thing I addressed in the article was Henry’s boasting that he and his colleagues were going to investigate Fox for biased news reporting, and my responding that I thought it was a swell idea so long as they then did the same with the NY Times, the three major networks, CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post. That time, I even had a witness, my wife Yvonne.)
Responding to his first paragraph, I wrote: “Dear Henry, I don’t blame you in the least for being angry. But you can imagine how I felt when I saw your name included with the other 74 Democrats who voted to continue funding an organization as corrupt and vile as ACORN. For the life of me, I could not think of a single reason why you would wish to align yourself, even for partisan political reasons, with a group that has not only been guilty of election fraud, but, as those now famous videos made clear, have no objection to assisting a pimp to set up a brothel. And not just any brothel, but one employing abducted 13-year-old girls from Latin America. Also, I did send you a note some months ago wishing you a speedy recovery when I heard that you had been rushed off to the hospital, so even though you never acknowledged it, it would suggest I’m not entirely heartless.”
Waxman’s email went on: “As I recall our poker friendship, you used to keep a card with every cent I ever lost to you to be sure you were paid. When you sent out a letter pleading for your friends to help you out at a difficult financial time in your life, you promised that you would repay every cent. I sent you $100. I never asked you for the money, nor have you offered to repay it. I did not want to embarrass you then or now. But since you have no hesitation to try to publicly hold me up to scorn, I see no reason not to ask you to repay your debt to me. I would like to use that money to donate to the ACLU or some other group that will defend your rights, along with everyone else, to free speech and other Constitutional protections. Sincerely, Henry Waxman.”
To this, I replied, “The card you mention was not for poker losses. Those were always minimal because none of us had any money, and were invariably paid off at the end of the game. The card was to keep track of the money I loaned you, and which you took an extremely long time to repay. It was to help you continue playing blackjack during one of our occasional trips to Tahoe or Vegas. I am truly sorry, though, that I did not pay back the $100. That was an oversight because in moving from one rental to another, as circumstances forced us to do several times once Hollywood ageism made me unemployable, I lost the IOU list. When, some years later, I was finally able to earn some money, I did pay back those whose names I remembered and those who subsequently reminded me. I regret that I forgot your generosity. I will have the check in the mail to you this afternoon. You are free, of course, to donate it to the ACLU, to ACORN or even to help pay for Nancy Pelosi’s next facelift. It’s your money, after all, unlike the money that Waxman-Markey will cost American taxpayers and American businesses. Regards, Burt.”)
Do I regret that Henry Waxman is one of 250-odd Democrats who are only too happy to rubberstamp every piece of legislative lunacy concocted by Obama, Axelrod, Emmanuel, Jarrett, Holdren, Sunstein and Jeff Jones? Of course. Do I regret that Henry Waxman has so totally lost his moral compass that even when 172 of his fellow liberals voted to stop funding ACORN, he stood steadfast with the sleazebags? You bet.
Worst of all, he probably sees it as being politically courageous. On the other hand, normal human beings, who haven’t spent most of their adult lives feeding at the public trough, recognize it as aiding and abetting.
A while ago, I wrote a piece titled “Blowing the Whistle on Waxman.” In case you missed it, I explained that Henry Waxman and I had been friends beginning almost 50 years ago at UCLA. I also said that we had seen each infrequently over the intervening years once he went to Sacramento as a state assemblyman and later to Washington as a member of Congress.
Over the years, I moved politically from left to right, while Henry moved from left to far left to over the edge. Still, I had a soft spot for him and, as a result, refrained from including his name when I would list the usual suspects, those left-wingers like Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Boxer and Murtha, who were doing their utmost to destroy America.
However, once Obama was elected and began pushing his radical agenda, while simultaneously surrounding himself with advisors who should never have been allowed within a mile of the White House, and who, for the most part, belonged either in jail or an asylum, Henry began feeling his oats. Suddenly, with the Democrats in control of the House, he was no longer a back-bencher. He even got to have his name on a piece of major legislation, the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill, a singular disaster that would send all of our energy costs soaring while simultaneously providing China and India with a tremendous advantage over what remains of our industrial industry.
That was bad enough, but even after those notorious ACORN videos aired on Glenn Beck’s TV show, Waxman and 74 of his left-wing cronies on Capitol Hill voted to continue funding ACORN, and that cut the Gordian knot for me. At that point, even old school ties weren’t enough to dissuade me, and, in a very sad frame of mind, I wrote the article.
An hour or so after it was posted, I received an email from Waxman’s office in Washington. It began: “Dear Burt, I can understand that we have disagreements about politics. I can see that you have some embarrassment about our past friendship, but you are not responsible for me and I am not (thank G-d) responsible for your views or actions. But I do resent that whatever I may have said to you in a conversation years ago is now being dredged up (and maybe made up) to make me look bad. I never thought I had to remember things I may have said to you to be provocative at the time, would be repeated and distorted, as if it were ‘on the record.’
(Note: Just for the record, I made up nothing and I distorted nothing. What I said he said about the steroid-using baseball players he called before his committee was exactly what he said; namely that he had no idea they were even famous until he saw his fellow congressmen lining up for their autographs; and, in response to a question I posed strictly out of curiosity, replied that he had no idea how long after an athlete stopped using steroids, they would continue to show up in drug tests. Besides, neither of those statements is particularly provocative. They merely indicate how unqualified and unaware a congressman can be and still feel himself entitled to sit in judgment of other people. The other thing I addressed in the article was Henry’s boasting that he and his colleagues were going to investigate Fox for biased news reporting, and my responding that I thought it was a swell idea so long as they then did the same with the NY Times, the three major networks, CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post. That time, I even had a witness, my wife Yvonne.)
Responding to his first paragraph, I wrote: “Dear Henry, I don’t blame you in the least for being angry. But you can imagine how I felt when I saw your name included with the other 74 Democrats who voted to continue funding an organization as corrupt and vile as ACORN. For the life of me, I could not think of a single reason why you would wish to align yourself, even for partisan political reasons, with a group that has not only been guilty of election fraud, but, as those now famous videos made clear, have no objection to assisting a pimp to set up a brothel. And not just any brothel, but one employing abducted 13-year-old girls from Latin America. Also, I did send you a note some months ago wishing you a speedy recovery when I heard that you had been rushed off to the hospital, so even though you never acknowledged it, it would suggest I’m not entirely heartless.”
Waxman’s email went on: “As I recall our poker friendship, you used to keep a card with every cent I ever lost to you to be sure you were paid. When you sent out a letter pleading for your friends to help you out at a difficult financial time in your life, you promised that you would repay every cent. I sent you $100. I never asked you for the money, nor have you offered to repay it. I did not want to embarrass you then or now. But since you have no hesitation to try to publicly hold me up to scorn, I see no reason not to ask you to repay your debt to me. I would like to use that money to donate to the ACLU or some other group that will defend your rights, along with everyone else, to free speech and other Constitutional protections. Sincerely, Henry Waxman.”
To this, I replied, “The card you mention was not for poker losses. Those were always minimal because none of us had any money, and were invariably paid off at the end of the game. The card was to keep track of the money I loaned you, and which you took an extremely long time to repay. It was to help you continue playing blackjack during one of our occasional trips to Tahoe or Vegas. I am truly sorry, though, that I did not pay back the $100. That was an oversight because in moving from one rental to another, as circumstances forced us to do several times once Hollywood ageism made me unemployable, I lost the IOU list. When, some years later, I was finally able to earn some money, I did pay back those whose names I remembered and those who subsequently reminded me. I regret that I forgot your generosity. I will have the check in the mail to you this afternoon. You are free, of course, to donate it to the ACLU, to ACORN or even to help pay for Nancy Pelosi’s next facelift. It’s your money, after all, unlike the money that Waxman-Markey will cost American taxpayers and American businesses. Regards, Burt.”)
Do I regret that Henry Waxman is one of 250-odd Democrats who are only too happy to rubberstamp every piece of legislative lunacy concocted by Obama, Axelrod, Emmanuel, Jarrett, Holdren, Sunstein and Jeff Jones? Of course. Do I regret that Henry Waxman has so totally lost his moral compass that even when 172 of his fellow liberals voted to stop funding ACORN, he stood steadfast with the sleazebags? You bet.
Worst of all, he probably sees it as being politically courageous. On the other hand, normal human beings, who haven’t spent most of their adult lives feeding at the public trough, recognize it as aiding and abetting.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Blowing The Whistle On Waxman
by Burt Prelutsky
I have come clean in the past about having been friends with Rep. Henry Waxman. We had met in the late 1950s at UCLA and wound up spending a lot of time over the following decade playing cards. In fact, once, some years later, I received a phone call from a guy profiling Waxman for the Washington Post. He wanted my impression of the young, pre-Congressional fellow. I told him that Henry was a terrible poker player, but was very astute at hearts. I said it made perfect sense because poker is a cut-throat game, every man for himself, whereas hearts is a game that involves constantly changing alliances. I regarded it as a perfect metaphor for a career in politics.
I knew from personal experience that Henry was a fish when it came to poker, but it was some time later that I found out how truly awful he was. Before being elected to Congress, he had gone to Sacramento as a state assemblyman. Wherever politicians congregate, you will find two things -- poker games and lobbyists. As you can imagine, lobbyists are not there to win money from those they spend their lives trying to influence. But it seems that Henry was so inept that, in spite of their best efforts, they kept beating him. This so embarrassed the lobbyists that they finally banished him from the game.
Naturally, once Mr. Waxman went to Washington, I saw him less and less frequently. Periodically, he would return to L.A., but that was in order to spend time meeting with constituents and holding political fund-raisers.
Over the years, Henry continued to be a liberal. He continued to think FDR was a combination of Moses and Santa Claus. I, on the other hand, who had been raised in a similar middle-class Jewish home, spent the intervening years wising up.
So it was that while attending a party a while back, a celebration of Henry’s 30th year in the House, I asked him what he was up to. When he said that one of his committees was preparing to investigate Fox News for biased reporting, I couldn’t keep my yap shut and maintain my status as a polite guest. Instead, after telling him that I thought it was a swell idea, I went on to suggest that when he and his colleagues finished investigating Fox, I trusted they would turn their eagle eyes on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and our own Pravda wannabe, the L.A. Times.
Henry simply gawked at me. He looked even more than usual like a fish out of water. It was as if he thought his old school chum had been replaced during the dead of night by a space pod.
I assume he had heard from mutual acquaintances that I was no longer a Democrat, but he was so obviously unprepared for my transformation into a conservative that I almost felt sorry for him. There was a moment of shocked silence, almost as if he was hoping I was going to laugh and admit I was just pulling his leg. Then the moment passed, and he moved off to be among those who thought three decades of Waxman in the U.S. Congress was something worth celebrating.
For old times sake, I have generally left Waxman out of my attacks on liberals in the House. After all, with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Barbara Lee, Linda Sanchez, Bernard Sanders and Barney Frank, taking up space, I didn’t think it was necessary to focus on my old college buddy.
But things have changed. First there was the totally irresponsible Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill, which would destroy America’s industrial capacity and send energy costs soaring for every American household, while simultaneously providing our competitors in China and India with every possible advantage.
But, for me, the final straw was Waxman’s voting along with 74 other House Democrats to continue funding ACORN with our tax dollars. Just as there’s no need to catalogue all of ACORN’s crimes and sins at this time, there’s no reason to bother trying to find a good excuse for Waxman’s defending this gang of creeps and thugs.
At this late date, I am not easily shocked, but I was so shocked and disgusted to find Waxman siding with ACORN that I decided I was going to share a piece of information that should add a measure of embarrassment to his well-deserved shame.
A few years ago, Henry garnered a great deal of publicity when he chaired a committee investigating the use of illegal substances in major league baseball. I suspect there were a lot of people who had never even heard of Waxman prior to the hearings. For my part, being a lifelong baseball fan, I was glad to see Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, sweating on the hot seat.
Those punks had done everything in their power to destroy the national pastime by cheating, thereby erasing such honorable names as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris, from the record book.
Shortly after the hearings, I had lunch with Henry. He confessed that he knew so little about baseball, he had no real idea who the players were, and that he was amazed to discover they were so famous that members of Congress and their staffs actually crowded into the hallways to collect autographs.
That was bad enough. But I then asked him, “If a minor leaguer uses steroids or human growth hormones in order to reach the majors, but stops once he gets there, how long will he continue to test positive?”
Henry admitted he had no idea.
So here was a congressman investigating baseball who not only had no idea who its most famous players were, but no pertinent information about the substances they were being condemned for using.
Now, seriously, do you really think that he knows any more about energy than he does about baseball or poker?
I have come clean in the past about having been friends with Rep. Henry Waxman. We had met in the late 1950s at UCLA and wound up spending a lot of time over the following decade playing cards. In fact, once, some years later, I received a phone call from a guy profiling Waxman for the Washington Post. He wanted my impression of the young, pre-Congressional fellow. I told him that Henry was a terrible poker player, but was very astute at hearts. I said it made perfect sense because poker is a cut-throat game, every man for himself, whereas hearts is a game that involves constantly changing alliances. I regarded it as a perfect metaphor for a career in politics.
I knew from personal experience that Henry was a fish when it came to poker, but it was some time later that I found out how truly awful he was. Before being elected to Congress, he had gone to Sacramento as a state assemblyman. Wherever politicians congregate, you will find two things -- poker games and lobbyists. As you can imagine, lobbyists are not there to win money from those they spend their lives trying to influence. But it seems that Henry was so inept that, in spite of their best efforts, they kept beating him. This so embarrassed the lobbyists that they finally banished him from the game.
Naturally, once Mr. Waxman went to Washington, I saw him less and less frequently. Periodically, he would return to L.A., but that was in order to spend time meeting with constituents and holding political fund-raisers.
Over the years, Henry continued to be a liberal. He continued to think FDR was a combination of Moses and Santa Claus. I, on the other hand, who had been raised in a similar middle-class Jewish home, spent the intervening years wising up.
So it was that while attending a party a while back, a celebration of Henry’s 30th year in the House, I asked him what he was up to. When he said that one of his committees was preparing to investigate Fox News for biased reporting, I couldn’t keep my yap shut and maintain my status as a polite guest. Instead, after telling him that I thought it was a swell idea, I went on to suggest that when he and his colleagues finished investigating Fox, I trusted they would turn their eagle eyes on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and our own Pravda wannabe, the L.A. Times.
Henry simply gawked at me. He looked even more than usual like a fish out of water. It was as if he thought his old school chum had been replaced during the dead of night by a space pod.
I assume he had heard from mutual acquaintances that I was no longer a Democrat, but he was so obviously unprepared for my transformation into a conservative that I almost felt sorry for him. There was a moment of shocked silence, almost as if he was hoping I was going to laugh and admit I was just pulling his leg. Then the moment passed, and he moved off to be among those who thought three decades of Waxman in the U.S. Congress was something worth celebrating.
For old times sake, I have generally left Waxman out of my attacks on liberals in the House. After all, with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Barbara Lee, Linda Sanchez, Bernard Sanders and Barney Frank, taking up space, I didn’t think it was necessary to focus on my old college buddy.
But things have changed. First there was the totally irresponsible Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill, which would destroy America’s industrial capacity and send energy costs soaring for every American household, while simultaneously providing our competitors in China and India with every possible advantage.
But, for me, the final straw was Waxman’s voting along with 74 other House Democrats to continue funding ACORN with our tax dollars. Just as there’s no need to catalogue all of ACORN’s crimes and sins at this time, there’s no reason to bother trying to find a good excuse for Waxman’s defending this gang of creeps and thugs.
At this late date, I am not easily shocked, but I was so shocked and disgusted to find Waxman siding with ACORN that I decided I was going to share a piece of information that should add a measure of embarrassment to his well-deserved shame.
A few years ago, Henry garnered a great deal of publicity when he chaired a committee investigating the use of illegal substances in major league baseball. I suspect there were a lot of people who had never even heard of Waxman prior to the hearings. For my part, being a lifelong baseball fan, I was glad to see Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, sweating on the hot seat.
Those punks had done everything in their power to destroy the national pastime by cheating, thereby erasing such honorable names as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris, from the record book.
Shortly after the hearings, I had lunch with Henry. He confessed that he knew so little about baseball, he had no real idea who the players were, and that he was amazed to discover they were so famous that members of Congress and their staffs actually crowded into the hallways to collect autographs.
That was bad enough. But I then asked him, “If a minor leaguer uses steroids or human growth hormones in order to reach the majors, but stops once he gets there, how long will he continue to test positive?”
Henry admitted he had no idea.
So here was a congressman investigating baseball who not only had no idea who its most famous players were, but no pertinent information about the substances they were being condemned for using.
Now, seriously, do you really think that he knows any more about energy than he does about baseball or poker?
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Liberals: America’s Termites
by Burt Prelutsky
Back when I was a kid, the two major fears in America revolved around polio and Communism. Because the first disease was so prevalent and so often fatal prior to the miraculous cures wrought by Dr. Albert Sabin and Dr. Jonas Salk, neither of whom managed to garner a Nobel Prize for their heroic efforts, children were kept out of public swimming pools and were discouraged from having too much physical activity. It’s a wonder that our entire generation didn’t grow up to be hypochondriacs because if you were even slightly fatigued or had an aching back or a stiff neck, anguished parents started measuring you for an iron lung.
The second disease, Communism, created its own form of hysteria. During the late 40s and early 50s, we had A-bomb drills in public schools. We grammar school kids were led to believe that in case the Russians hit L.A. with an atomic bomb, we would be safe so long as we dropped to the floor and huddled beneath our desks with our hands clasped tightly behind our necks. As everyone knows, there’s nothing better than tiny hands to ward off the effects of atomic radiation. To this day, I wonder who came up with that particular brainstorm.
On the off-chance that the Russkies elected not to vaporize us, a lot of people were convinced that the plan to prevent tooth decay by introducing fluoride into our reservoirs was a Commie plot. The fluoride, we were warned, would turn our brains to mush and make us easy prey for the Soviet Menace. It’s taken about 60 years, but I am now convinced that the scaremongers were right. How else to explain American liberals except by accepting that the Commies contaminated our water supply?
The fact that most Americans haven’t turned into brain-dead zombies muttering “hope…change…hope…change” like those scary creatures in horror movies only goes to prove that people have different tolerances to tainted water, just as they do to alcohol, various viruses and Barack Obama’s voice.
I mean, seriously, when Obama, during the campaign, spoke about judging him by the people he surrounded himself with, he pointed to Richard Lugar, Joe Biden and Warren Buffett, while drawing the curtain on Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. These days, though, he surrounds himself with such visitors from a strange planet as Van Jones, Jeff Jones and Sass Sunstein. I’m just wondering if it’s still okay for us to judge him by his associates.
The MSM likened Obama to Abe Lincoln. I guess their confusion was caused by both men being skinny and from Illinois. One major, rather obvious difference, though, is that Lincoln waged a war to preserve the Union. Obama, on the other hand, would go to war to preserve such unions as the SEIU and the UAW.
Liberals get all in a tizzy when they’re accused of hypocrisy, but it’s hard to escape the fact that while arguing for the redistribution of wealth, you never see such kazillionaires as George Soros, Dianne Feinstein, Jay Rockefeller, Charles Schumer or John Kerry, redistributing any of theirs or even paying a penny more in taxes than is absolutely required. And, as we discovered when he was putting his administration together, Obama’s friends and colleagues quite often try to avoid paying any taxes at all.
You also don’t see any of his political allies signing up for Obamacare or trading in their outrageously generous pension plans for Social Security. These phonies are far worse than Marie Antoinette, who allegedly joked that if poor people couldn’t afford bread, they should eat cake. What these creeps would have us eat is nowhere near as tasty or nutritious.
Consider the fact that the late unlamented Ted Kennedy was a hero to the green movement even after he used his considerable clout to make certain that windmills, those essential items that would free us from our dependence on fossil fuels, didn’t interfere with the view from his estate.
To fully appreciate how contemptible the left is, you merely have to note that whenever people oppose any item on Obama’s radical agenda, liberals follow Jimmy Carter’s lead and label them racists. The majority of Americans voted for Obama last November and now, apparently millions of them, according to recent polls, are suffering from buyer’s remorse. Is it really possible that they simply failed to notice on election day that they were voting for a black man?
It reminds me of those various black basketball and football coaches who insist, when they’re fired for not winning enough games, that it’s because of their race, even though the people firing them are the very same people who hired them in the first place.
Recently, some Americans were outraged when movie director Oliver Stone made a laudatory documentary about Hugo Chavez and then showed up with the Communist dictator at the Cannes Film Festival, where they bumped fists and naturally received a standing ovation. It was enough to make me wish that Major Aldo Rayne had been there with his Inglorious Basterds to deal with Stone, Chavez and the assorted Euro-trash in attendance.
Speaking of Stone and Chavez, there are those who wonder why lefties are so often drawn to tyrants. Why is it, normal people ask, that those on the left looked so fondly on Stalin; why they adorn their walls with Che Guevara posters; why they wore those dopey caps with the red star and carted around Mao’s Little Red Book in the 60s; why Sean Penn went to Iraq to show his solidarity with Saddam Hussein; why, to this day, they will flock to Cuba and kiss Castro’s behind; why they will side with Hamas and Hezbollah, while accusing Israel of crimes against humanity; and why Thomas Friedman of the N.Y. Times will feel free to extol the virtues of one-party autocracies such as China.
The answer is that they identify with tyrants. They don’t oppose gulags on principle; they simply don’t wish to be sent to one. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to run one. They also have a soft spot for dictators because they, themselves, are miserable excuses for human beings who look down on the masses as being ignorant, religious, peons who, in a just world, would exist only to serve them.
Don’t you ever find yourself wondering why liberals are happy to see Obama expanding the power and influence of the federal government, of appointing three dozen regulatory czars who answer only to him, of gobbling up major industrial and financial entities in a way reminiscent of Stalin and Hitler? I mean, wouldn’t you think they’d dread the thought of a Republican president having all of that authority in the future? After all, we have presidential elections every four years. It’s not as if Obama could rule for 27 years like Mao, for 29 years like Stalin or for half a century like Castro.
Shouldn’t those on the left be the least bit concerned that a Mitt Romney, a Rick Perry, a Bobby Jindal or, God forbid, a Sarah Palin could inherit all that power?
After pondering that question, how can you avoid concluding that they simply have no intention of ever allowing that to happen?
Back when I was a kid, the two major fears in America revolved around polio and Communism. Because the first disease was so prevalent and so often fatal prior to the miraculous cures wrought by Dr. Albert Sabin and Dr. Jonas Salk, neither of whom managed to garner a Nobel Prize for their heroic efforts, children were kept out of public swimming pools and were discouraged from having too much physical activity. It’s a wonder that our entire generation didn’t grow up to be hypochondriacs because if you were even slightly fatigued or had an aching back or a stiff neck, anguished parents started measuring you for an iron lung.
The second disease, Communism, created its own form of hysteria. During the late 40s and early 50s, we had A-bomb drills in public schools. We grammar school kids were led to believe that in case the Russians hit L.A. with an atomic bomb, we would be safe so long as we dropped to the floor and huddled beneath our desks with our hands clasped tightly behind our necks. As everyone knows, there’s nothing better than tiny hands to ward off the effects of atomic radiation. To this day, I wonder who came up with that particular brainstorm.
On the off-chance that the Russkies elected not to vaporize us, a lot of people were convinced that the plan to prevent tooth decay by introducing fluoride into our reservoirs was a Commie plot. The fluoride, we were warned, would turn our brains to mush and make us easy prey for the Soviet Menace. It’s taken about 60 years, but I am now convinced that the scaremongers were right. How else to explain American liberals except by accepting that the Commies contaminated our water supply?
The fact that most Americans haven’t turned into brain-dead zombies muttering “hope…change…hope…change” like those scary creatures in horror movies only goes to prove that people have different tolerances to tainted water, just as they do to alcohol, various viruses and Barack Obama’s voice.
I mean, seriously, when Obama, during the campaign, spoke about judging him by the people he surrounded himself with, he pointed to Richard Lugar, Joe Biden and Warren Buffett, while drawing the curtain on Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. These days, though, he surrounds himself with such visitors from a strange planet as Van Jones, Jeff Jones and Sass Sunstein. I’m just wondering if it’s still okay for us to judge him by his associates.
The MSM likened Obama to Abe Lincoln. I guess their confusion was caused by both men being skinny and from Illinois. One major, rather obvious difference, though, is that Lincoln waged a war to preserve the Union. Obama, on the other hand, would go to war to preserve such unions as the SEIU and the UAW.
Liberals get all in a tizzy when they’re accused of hypocrisy, but it’s hard to escape the fact that while arguing for the redistribution of wealth, you never see such kazillionaires as George Soros, Dianne Feinstein, Jay Rockefeller, Charles Schumer or John Kerry, redistributing any of theirs or even paying a penny more in taxes than is absolutely required. And, as we discovered when he was putting his administration together, Obama’s friends and colleagues quite often try to avoid paying any taxes at all.
You also don’t see any of his political allies signing up for Obamacare or trading in their outrageously generous pension plans for Social Security. These phonies are far worse than Marie Antoinette, who allegedly joked that if poor people couldn’t afford bread, they should eat cake. What these creeps would have us eat is nowhere near as tasty or nutritious.
Consider the fact that the late unlamented Ted Kennedy was a hero to the green movement even after he used his considerable clout to make certain that windmills, those essential items that would free us from our dependence on fossil fuels, didn’t interfere with the view from his estate.
To fully appreciate how contemptible the left is, you merely have to note that whenever people oppose any item on Obama’s radical agenda, liberals follow Jimmy Carter’s lead and label them racists. The majority of Americans voted for Obama last November and now, apparently millions of them, according to recent polls, are suffering from buyer’s remorse. Is it really possible that they simply failed to notice on election day that they were voting for a black man?
It reminds me of those various black basketball and football coaches who insist, when they’re fired for not winning enough games, that it’s because of their race, even though the people firing them are the very same people who hired them in the first place.
Recently, some Americans were outraged when movie director Oliver Stone made a laudatory documentary about Hugo Chavez and then showed up with the Communist dictator at the Cannes Film Festival, where they bumped fists and naturally received a standing ovation. It was enough to make me wish that Major Aldo Rayne had been there with his Inglorious Basterds to deal with Stone, Chavez and the assorted Euro-trash in attendance.
Speaking of Stone and Chavez, there are those who wonder why lefties are so often drawn to tyrants. Why is it, normal people ask, that those on the left looked so fondly on Stalin; why they adorn their walls with Che Guevara posters; why they wore those dopey caps with the red star and carted around Mao’s Little Red Book in the 60s; why Sean Penn went to Iraq to show his solidarity with Saddam Hussein; why, to this day, they will flock to Cuba and kiss Castro’s behind; why they will side with Hamas and Hezbollah, while accusing Israel of crimes against humanity; and why Thomas Friedman of the N.Y. Times will feel free to extol the virtues of one-party autocracies such as China.
The answer is that they identify with tyrants. They don’t oppose gulags on principle; they simply don’t wish to be sent to one. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to run one. They also have a soft spot for dictators because they, themselves, are miserable excuses for human beings who look down on the masses as being ignorant, religious, peons who, in a just world, would exist only to serve them.
Don’t you ever find yourself wondering why liberals are happy to see Obama expanding the power and influence of the federal government, of appointing three dozen regulatory czars who answer only to him, of gobbling up major industrial and financial entities in a way reminiscent of Stalin and Hitler? I mean, wouldn’t you think they’d dread the thought of a Republican president having all of that authority in the future? After all, we have presidential elections every four years. It’s not as if Obama could rule for 27 years like Mao, for 29 years like Stalin or for half a century like Castro.
Shouldn’t those on the left be the least bit concerned that a Mitt Romney, a Rick Perry, a Bobby Jindal or, God forbid, a Sarah Palin could inherit all that power?
After pondering that question, how can you avoid concluding that they simply have no intention of ever allowing that to happen?
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Not-So Secret Secret Service
by Burt Prelutsky
Maybe because I was laid up with the flu, my defenses were down. Otherwise, even though I’d checked it out of the library, I probably wouldn’t have broken down and read Ronald Kessler’s “In the President’s Secret Service.” You see, when it comes to books, I tend to prefer novels to non-fiction. The reason is that novels are the work of writers, whereas non-fiction is written by people whose strength lies in research, not in writing with any sense of style.
Mr. Kessler has turned out a great many books over the years. In fact, about 25 years ago we met because there was the possibility I was going to adapt one of them as a TV movie. As is often the case, nothing came of it. We’d had no contact since then, but I heard him being interviewed on Michael Medved’s radio show. It was a good interview in the way that some movie trailers are very good. That is to say, just about all the best parts, the gossipy parts, were covered.
One of the intriguing things to me was how Kessler managed to get past and present agents to go so candidly on record. After all, there is a reason they call it the Secret Service and not the Blabbermouth Society. It didn’t take me too long to figure out the carrot Kessler employed as motivation. It seems that the agents are sick and tired of being treated like an abused stepchild. Because so many agents have taken early retirement, either to make more money in the private security sector or to join a better run organization such as the FBI, the agents who remain are angry about being spread too thin. Additionally, being patriots, they fear that the end result of the Service being undercut is that assassinations are almost inevitable.
It seems that those who head up the Service are reluctant to complain that their ranks have been so seriously depleted that they are cutting dangerous corners. Also, the agents feel that far too often, they are shown no respect by those they are sworn to protect, and that they are treated like gofers and babysitters.
Unfortunately, while the trade-off resulted in agents betraying confidences they had vowed to keep, it resulted in Kessler’s turning out a book that, aside from the gossip, often reads like a plea to Congress for additional funds and manpower. Others may feel differently, but I felt like the book was twice as long as it needed to be and as redundant as a Sham-Wow! commercial.
Some of the presidents and their families come off well, others come off as…well, pretty much the way you would probably guess.
The Obamas both get high marks, as does Cindy McCain, but not her husband. It seems John was irascible, short-tempered and just plain rude. So, apparently, it wasn’t just Sarah Palin he treated like dirt.
Although it’s not mentioned in the book, I still recall the first time I fully understood what a punk John Kerry was. It happened during the 2004 campaign, on one of his skiing vacations. It seems he took a tumble on the slopes and, no sooner did he get up, than he began bawling out a Secret Service agent for having gotten in his way. I recall thinking that instead of being grateful that these guys were prepared to take a bullet for him, he couldn’t resist getting on the case of a man who hadn’t really chosen to freeze his ass off on a mountainside. I suppose if a Secret Service agent had been shot while trying to protect the man who resembles the front end of a horse and who behaves like its back end, Kerry would have expected to get a Purple Heart for being in the general vicinity.
Not too surprisingly, the Clintons had similar manners. Hillary, we’re told, never once in eight years said “Thank you” to a member of the Secret Service.
Al Gore, while chastising his son over a mediocre report card, indicated the Secret Service agents in the room, and said, “If you don’t straighten up, you won’t get into the right schools, and if you don’t get into the right schools, you could end up like these guys.”
Of all the kids who have called the White House home over the past few decades, Chelsea Clinton gets the highest marks, while Amy Carter gets the lowest. On one occasion, she crushed a package of soda crackers, dumped them on the floor and told her Secret Service agent to clean them up. When the agent complained to her father, Jimmy Carter told him to do as he’d been told. “It’s your job.”
I don’t suppose anyone will be too shocked to learn that Carter was the biggest phony of them all. For instance, he would make a big deal of showing up to work at the Oval Office at 6 a.m., but by 6:30, behind drawn curtains, his reputation properly burnished, he would be taking a nap.
Neither Jimmy nor Rosalynn would speak to the agents. Jimmy wouldn’t even say “Hello” or “Good morning.” Because image was everything to Mr. Peanut, if there were photographers around when he was getting on or off an airplane, he would insist on toting his own carry-on bag, but it would be empty! Sort of reminds me of all those photos of Carter posed holding a hammer at those Habitat for Humanity building sites. I was always willing to lay odds that the hammer was a prop and had never struck a nail.
His son, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, would pick up women at bars in Georgetown by asking them if they wanted to have sex in the White House. Sounds a lot like Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton, doesn’t it?
All the Bushes, but especially Barbara and Laura, were well-liked by the people whose job was to protect them and their families.
George W. Bush felt so guilty about taking the agents off to Crawford, Texas, at Christmas time, he began spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Washington, so that the agents could be home to celebrate with their own families.
Ronald Reagan, it seems, not only enjoyed riding horses and shmoozing with the agents, but he would employ army jets to transport children who needed to travel for kidney transplants. He was also known to write checks for $3,000 or $4,000 to people with hard luck stories. Unlike liberal politicians, who are only generous with taxpayers’ money, he would simply say to those who knew the truth, “Don’t tell people. I’ve been poor myself.”
Perhaps the best thing about the book is that it might make future presidents behave decently to those who are sworn to take a bullet for them, even if they might not in a million years vote for them. After all, Kessler might write a sequel some day.
Maybe because I was laid up with the flu, my defenses were down. Otherwise, even though I’d checked it out of the library, I probably wouldn’t have broken down and read Ronald Kessler’s “In the President’s Secret Service.” You see, when it comes to books, I tend to prefer novels to non-fiction. The reason is that novels are the work of writers, whereas non-fiction is written by people whose strength lies in research, not in writing with any sense of style.
Mr. Kessler has turned out a great many books over the years. In fact, about 25 years ago we met because there was the possibility I was going to adapt one of them as a TV movie. As is often the case, nothing came of it. We’d had no contact since then, but I heard him being interviewed on Michael Medved’s radio show. It was a good interview in the way that some movie trailers are very good. That is to say, just about all the best parts, the gossipy parts, were covered.
One of the intriguing things to me was how Kessler managed to get past and present agents to go so candidly on record. After all, there is a reason they call it the Secret Service and not the Blabbermouth Society. It didn’t take me too long to figure out the carrot Kessler employed as motivation. It seems that the agents are sick and tired of being treated like an abused stepchild. Because so many agents have taken early retirement, either to make more money in the private security sector or to join a better run organization such as the FBI, the agents who remain are angry about being spread too thin. Additionally, being patriots, they fear that the end result of the Service being undercut is that assassinations are almost inevitable.
It seems that those who head up the Service are reluctant to complain that their ranks have been so seriously depleted that they are cutting dangerous corners. Also, the agents feel that far too often, they are shown no respect by those they are sworn to protect, and that they are treated like gofers and babysitters.
Unfortunately, while the trade-off resulted in agents betraying confidences they had vowed to keep, it resulted in Kessler’s turning out a book that, aside from the gossip, often reads like a plea to Congress for additional funds and manpower. Others may feel differently, but I felt like the book was twice as long as it needed to be and as redundant as a Sham-Wow! commercial.
Some of the presidents and their families come off well, others come off as…well, pretty much the way you would probably guess.
The Obamas both get high marks, as does Cindy McCain, but not her husband. It seems John was irascible, short-tempered and just plain rude. So, apparently, it wasn’t just Sarah Palin he treated like dirt.
Although it’s not mentioned in the book, I still recall the first time I fully understood what a punk John Kerry was. It happened during the 2004 campaign, on one of his skiing vacations. It seems he took a tumble on the slopes and, no sooner did he get up, than he began bawling out a Secret Service agent for having gotten in his way. I recall thinking that instead of being grateful that these guys were prepared to take a bullet for him, he couldn’t resist getting on the case of a man who hadn’t really chosen to freeze his ass off on a mountainside. I suppose if a Secret Service agent had been shot while trying to protect the man who resembles the front end of a horse and who behaves like its back end, Kerry would have expected to get a Purple Heart for being in the general vicinity.
Not too surprisingly, the Clintons had similar manners. Hillary, we’re told, never once in eight years said “Thank you” to a member of the Secret Service.
Al Gore, while chastising his son over a mediocre report card, indicated the Secret Service agents in the room, and said, “If you don’t straighten up, you won’t get into the right schools, and if you don’t get into the right schools, you could end up like these guys.”
Of all the kids who have called the White House home over the past few decades, Chelsea Clinton gets the highest marks, while Amy Carter gets the lowest. On one occasion, she crushed a package of soda crackers, dumped them on the floor and told her Secret Service agent to clean them up. When the agent complained to her father, Jimmy Carter told him to do as he’d been told. “It’s your job.”
I don’t suppose anyone will be too shocked to learn that Carter was the biggest phony of them all. For instance, he would make a big deal of showing up to work at the Oval Office at 6 a.m., but by 6:30, behind drawn curtains, his reputation properly burnished, he would be taking a nap.
Neither Jimmy nor Rosalynn would speak to the agents. Jimmy wouldn’t even say “Hello” or “Good morning.” Because image was everything to Mr. Peanut, if there were photographers around when he was getting on or off an airplane, he would insist on toting his own carry-on bag, but it would be empty! Sort of reminds me of all those photos of Carter posed holding a hammer at those Habitat for Humanity building sites. I was always willing to lay odds that the hammer was a prop and had never struck a nail.
His son, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, would pick up women at bars in Georgetown by asking them if they wanted to have sex in the White House. Sounds a lot like Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton, doesn’t it?
All the Bushes, but especially Barbara and Laura, were well-liked by the people whose job was to protect them and their families.
George W. Bush felt so guilty about taking the agents off to Crawford, Texas, at Christmas time, he began spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Washington, so that the agents could be home to celebrate with their own families.
Ronald Reagan, it seems, not only enjoyed riding horses and shmoozing with the agents, but he would employ army jets to transport children who needed to travel for kidney transplants. He was also known to write checks for $3,000 or $4,000 to people with hard luck stories. Unlike liberal politicians, who are only generous with taxpayers’ money, he would simply say to those who knew the truth, “Don’t tell people. I’ve been poor myself.”
Perhaps the best thing about the book is that it might make future presidents behave decently to those who are sworn to take a bullet for them, even if they might not in a million years vote for them. After all, Kessler might write a sequel some day.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Catching Up With The News
by Burt Prelutsky
I wasn’t surprised that Rep. Joe Wilson felt compelled to apologize to President Obama for calling him a liar. I also wasn’t surprised to hear that within 24 hours, thousands of liberals had sent in over $200,000 in contributions to Wilson’s opponent in next year’s election even though they knew nothing about him except that he was running against Wilson. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the other 434 members of the House had censured, expelled or ridden Rep. Wilson out of Washington, D.C., on a rail. I mean, where the heck does this guy get off speaking the truth in the hallowed halls of Congress?
Speaking of Congress, although the research isn’t yet complete, the early indicators are that, rumors to the contrary, you can not get swine flu from exposure to Henry Waxman.
Scientists at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine confirmed that 50 years of research found that, aside from price, there was no difference between conventionally-grown foodstuffs and the ugly, under-sized items you find in the organic section at the supermarket.
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy made his name explaining how you could tell if you were a redneck. I trust you understand that fame and fortune such as he achieved aren’t my motivation. But merely as a public service, I thought I’d point out how to recognize if you’re a racist. For instance, if you think that Jesse Jackson is an extortionist; that Al Sharpton is a con man; that Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright and Van Jones are three of a kind; and that the Black Congressional Caucus, ACORN, the SEIU, the Black Panthers, Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama, present a clear and present danger to our Republic, you are what passes for a racist in 2009.
Frankly, I keep waiting for Obama to doff the mufti and start appearing in some nicely tailored uniform, for clearly, the cult of personality has been introduced successfully for the first time ever in our nation’s history. If you disagree, what would you call that red, white and blue Obama symbol that has pretty much supplanted the presidential seal in the past year? And outside of such places as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, have you ever seen so many posters and pictures of a national leader?
Perhaps because I don’t watch very much TV, I’ve only recently become aware of a TV commercial which could easily have been written and produced by the White House, possibly under the auspices of the NEA. In the spot I saw, a black deliveryman for Miller High Life shows up in a private box at the race track and confiscates all the beer from the rich white people and then hands the bottles over to the regular folks at the track, all the time muttering that the people who actually paid for the stuff don’t deserve it because they’re “hoity-toity.”
I realize it’s only a commercial, but if we have redistribution of wealth and health care, can redistribution of brewskis be far behind on that great-come-and-get-it-day?
Like everyone else, I noticed that in his address to Congress, Obama, who had been insisting all along that there were about 45 million people in America without health insurance, was suddenly, without explanation, referring to 30 million. It seems to me that if he can miraculously make 15 million people just disappear, all he has to do is give two more speeches to completely eliminate the problem.
Finally, I recently saw Obamacare summed up rather succinctly by a picture of an elderly American set adrift on an ice floe. Of course, knowing David Axelrod, Rahm and Ezekiel Emmanuel, John Holdren, Cass Sunstein and AARP, as I have come to know them, I’m sure they’ll find a swell way to sell it to us. My guess is that they’ll simply call their final solution to the problem of all those pesky old folks wanting medical attention Obama’s Magical Ocean Cruises.
I wasn’t surprised that Rep. Joe Wilson felt compelled to apologize to President Obama for calling him a liar. I also wasn’t surprised to hear that within 24 hours, thousands of liberals had sent in over $200,000 in contributions to Wilson’s opponent in next year’s election even though they knew nothing about him except that he was running against Wilson. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the other 434 members of the House had censured, expelled or ridden Rep. Wilson out of Washington, D.C., on a rail. I mean, where the heck does this guy get off speaking the truth in the hallowed halls of Congress?
Speaking of Congress, although the research isn’t yet complete, the early indicators are that, rumors to the contrary, you can not get swine flu from exposure to Henry Waxman.
Scientists at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine confirmed that 50 years of research found that, aside from price, there was no difference between conventionally-grown foodstuffs and the ugly, under-sized items you find in the organic section at the supermarket.
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy made his name explaining how you could tell if you were a redneck. I trust you understand that fame and fortune such as he achieved aren’t my motivation. But merely as a public service, I thought I’d point out how to recognize if you’re a racist. For instance, if you think that Jesse Jackson is an extortionist; that Al Sharpton is a con man; that Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright and Van Jones are three of a kind; and that the Black Congressional Caucus, ACORN, the SEIU, the Black Panthers, Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama, present a clear and present danger to our Republic, you are what passes for a racist in 2009.
Frankly, I keep waiting for Obama to doff the mufti and start appearing in some nicely tailored uniform, for clearly, the cult of personality has been introduced successfully for the first time ever in our nation’s history. If you disagree, what would you call that red, white and blue Obama symbol that has pretty much supplanted the presidential seal in the past year? And outside of such places as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, have you ever seen so many posters and pictures of a national leader?
Perhaps because I don’t watch very much TV, I’ve only recently become aware of a TV commercial which could easily have been written and produced by the White House, possibly under the auspices of the NEA. In the spot I saw, a black deliveryman for Miller High Life shows up in a private box at the race track and confiscates all the beer from the rich white people and then hands the bottles over to the regular folks at the track, all the time muttering that the people who actually paid for the stuff don’t deserve it because they’re “hoity-toity.”
I realize it’s only a commercial, but if we have redistribution of wealth and health care, can redistribution of brewskis be far behind on that great-come-and-get-it-day?
Like everyone else, I noticed that in his address to Congress, Obama, who had been insisting all along that there were about 45 million people in America without health insurance, was suddenly, without explanation, referring to 30 million. It seems to me that if he can miraculously make 15 million people just disappear, all he has to do is give two more speeches to completely eliminate the problem.
Finally, I recently saw Obamacare summed up rather succinctly by a picture of an elderly American set adrift on an ice floe. Of course, knowing David Axelrod, Rahm and Ezekiel Emmanuel, John Holdren, Cass Sunstein and AARP, as I have come to know them, I’m sure they’ll find a swell way to sell it to us. My guess is that they’ll simply call their final solution to the problem of all those pesky old folks wanting medical attention Obama’s Magical Ocean Cruises.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Not-So Noble Nobel Prize
by Burt Prelutsky
There is probably nothing that people would rather have mentioned in their obituaries than the fact that along the way they had won a Nobel Prize. And it’s not just the money, either, although 1.4 million smackers is nothing to sneeze at. No, what makes the Nobel Prize so prized is the prestige it gives the recipients. If you are lucky enough to win one, you will forever be known as Nobel Prize winner Burt Prelutsky or whatever your own name happens to be, and your words, even those on subjects far removed from the field for which you were honored, will be taken terribly seriously by a very gullible public.
I mean, you only have to look at some of the folks who have taken home the Prize to recognize its hallowed place in the world. The list includes the likes of Ivan Pavlov, Sir Alexander Fleming, Marie and Pierre Curie, Harold Urey, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Francis Crick, James Watson, and Albert Einstein. Personally, I have no problem with such honorees. I mean, even though what I know about chemistry, medicine, physiology and physics, could be inscribed on the head of a very small pin, I am willing to accept that their contributions were remarkable. And if dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel had left it at that, I’d have no problem with the Prize; I mean aside from my never having won it.
Of course I’m aware that even in the sciences, people grovel for glory and will happily stab a colleague in the back if it improves their chances for Nobel recognition. But at least these folks are responsible for actual achievements. They discovered such things as penicillin, radium, heavy hydrogen, and the double helix.
I suppose because they had all this extra dynamite money lying around, the Scandinavians felt the need to invent a new category called economic sciences. Suddenly every two-bit economist woke up to discover that no matter how loony an economic scheme he came up with, he stood a good chance of winning a cool million in the Swedish lottery. In fact, one woman, in her divorce settlement from a professor of economics, insisted that she get half the loot if he copped a Prize within the following ten years. Sure enough, nine years and a few months later, the woman was several hundred thousand dollars richer!
I don’t remember the honoree’s name, but it’s a pretty safe guess that he was on the faculty at the University of Chicago. A slew of its professors have won the Prize just in the past few decades. By this time, the administration can pretty much promise new recruits a parking space, a discount in the faculty lounge, and a Nobel Prize of their very own.
But my real beef with the Nobel enterprise is with two other categories -- Literature and Peace. And, no, I’m not bitter that in spite of my sterling prose, I haven’t been invited to don white tie and tails and give a stirring, but humorous, acceptance speech in Stockholm. For one thing, I don’t own a pair of tails, and, for another, I hate flying. And while I have no argument with such recipients as Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and John Steinbeck, and am even willing to grant that writers such as William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill, and Jean-Paul Sartre, just might be acquired tastes that I never acquired, how did they come up with Giosue Carducci, Yasunari Kawabata and Shmuel Agnon?
I’m not suggesting that Carducci, Kawabata and Agnon, aren’t worthy of literary laurels. How could I? I’d never even heard of them. What I do know is that they wrote in Italian, Japanese and Hebrew, respectively. Are you going to tell me that anyone at the Swedish Academy read them in their original language? Baloney! It’s my hunch that periodically the Swedes simply decide it’s Japan’s turn to win or Italy’s or Israel’s.
What makes me even more convinced this to be the case is the hooey they concoct as a reason for lavishing fame and fortune on the poor sap. About Carducci, they rhapsodized: “A tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces.” About Kawabata: “For his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind.” And in praise of Agnon: “For his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people.”
And then there’s poor Wole Soyinka, the pride and joy of Nigeria, who had to stand there in his best bib and tucker and keep a straight face while some Swedish gentleman actually said, “Mr. Soyinka, who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones, fashions the drama of existence.”
I suppose the fellow who writes this stuff will some day win a Nobel Prize of his own “for churning out high-sounding bilge year in and year out, expressing the Scandinavian fondness for unfathomable twaddle.”
For good measure, between 1901 and 1910, which was when Sam Clemens died, they managed to give the Prize to the likes of Sully Prudhomme, Christian Mommsen, Bjorstjerne Bjornson, Frederic Mistral, Jose Echegaray y Eizaguirre, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Rudolf Eucken, Selma Lagerlof and Paul Heyse, but not the author of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Life on the Mississippi.” I wonder if Sully or Jose or Bjorstjerne thought, when they received the good news, that they might have gotten Mark Twain’s mail by mistake.
But even the obvious shortcomings of the Literature award can’t compare to the absurdity of the Peace Prize. It isn’t simply that the award has gone home with such villains as Le Duc Tho, Kofi Annan and Yasser Arafat. It has also left Sweden in Jimmy Carter’s suitcase and Al Gore’s handbag, and in the luggage of scores of other self-righteous, lame-brained pacifists over the past 108 years.
This isn’t to suggest that people like George Marshall, Elie Wiesel and the Dalai Lama, don’t deserve our good thoughts, but I’d have thought better of them if they’d simply said thanks, but no thanks. I mean, the chairman of the Peace committee, in honoring Carter, made it clear that they were using him as a means by which to vilify President Bush for invading Iraq. And there you have a clue to the reason I despise Carter and the Norwegian Nobel Committee -- and please don’t ask me why the Swedes out-sourced the Peace Prize selection to Norway, keeping the important ones for themselves. Perhaps the Swedes figured that the Norwegians simply weren’t up to any heavy lifting. In any case, I hate Carter because he was so hungry for the tawdry honor that he grasped it to his bosom even though he knew he was only getting it because the presenters needed a stalking horse in order to insult his president and his country.
But, Carter aside, I hate the Peace Prize because it never goes to anyone who is waging war. These knuckleheads refuse to acknowledge that sometimes peace can only be achieved by those willing to confront and defeat evil. Peace, after all, is easy enough to achieve. All you need is to never oppose tyranny. So it is that no awards were presented between 1914 and 1919, except in 1917, when it went to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Then again, no peace awards between 1939 and 1943. Then, in 1944 -- surprise, surprise -- the International Committee of the Red Cross won again.
Inasmuch as they often honor groups and not merely individuals, wouldn’t you think the Scandinavians would have acknowledged their own debt to the R.A.F. and to the British civilians who risked their lives to rescue the English army at Dunkirk, or to the U.S. military, for that matter? After all, the Nazis were well on their way to weaning the Swedes and the Norwegians off meatballs and herring and on to bratwurst and sauerkraut.
Why didn’t they give it to FDR or, better yet, Winston Churchill? No, Sir Winston didn’t win a Nobel Prize for helping to defeat Nazi Germany. He finally got it in 1953 -- for Literature, for-crying-out-loud! -- “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted humansvalues.”
I can’t help thinking that Sir Winston would have preferred winning it “for having tied a tin can to der fuhrer’s fanny.”
As for the latest recipient, how can anyone dare suggest that Barack Obama, who, in spite of not even being able to bring the Olympic Games to Chicago, hasn’t done every bit as much to bring peace to the world as Carter, Le Duc Tho and Yasser Arafat?
There is probably nothing that people would rather have mentioned in their obituaries than the fact that along the way they had won a Nobel Prize. And it’s not just the money, either, although 1.4 million smackers is nothing to sneeze at. No, what makes the Nobel Prize so prized is the prestige it gives the recipients. If you are lucky enough to win one, you will forever be known as Nobel Prize winner Burt Prelutsky or whatever your own name happens to be, and your words, even those on subjects far removed from the field for which you were honored, will be taken terribly seriously by a very gullible public.
I mean, you only have to look at some of the folks who have taken home the Prize to recognize its hallowed place in the world. The list includes the likes of Ivan Pavlov, Sir Alexander Fleming, Marie and Pierre Curie, Harold Urey, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Francis Crick, James Watson, and Albert Einstein. Personally, I have no problem with such honorees. I mean, even though what I know about chemistry, medicine, physiology and physics, could be inscribed on the head of a very small pin, I am willing to accept that their contributions were remarkable. And if dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel had left it at that, I’d have no problem with the Prize; I mean aside from my never having won it.
Of course I’m aware that even in the sciences, people grovel for glory and will happily stab a colleague in the back if it improves their chances for Nobel recognition. But at least these folks are responsible for actual achievements. They discovered such things as penicillin, radium, heavy hydrogen, and the double helix.
I suppose because they had all this extra dynamite money lying around, the Scandinavians felt the need to invent a new category called economic sciences. Suddenly every two-bit economist woke up to discover that no matter how loony an economic scheme he came up with, he stood a good chance of winning a cool million in the Swedish lottery. In fact, one woman, in her divorce settlement from a professor of economics, insisted that she get half the loot if he copped a Prize within the following ten years. Sure enough, nine years and a few months later, the woman was several hundred thousand dollars richer!
I don’t remember the honoree’s name, but it’s a pretty safe guess that he was on the faculty at the University of Chicago. A slew of its professors have won the Prize just in the past few decades. By this time, the administration can pretty much promise new recruits a parking space, a discount in the faculty lounge, and a Nobel Prize of their very own.
But my real beef with the Nobel enterprise is with two other categories -- Literature and Peace. And, no, I’m not bitter that in spite of my sterling prose, I haven’t been invited to don white tie and tails and give a stirring, but humorous, acceptance speech in Stockholm. For one thing, I don’t own a pair of tails, and, for another, I hate flying. And while I have no argument with such recipients as Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and John Steinbeck, and am even willing to grant that writers such as William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill, and Jean-Paul Sartre, just might be acquired tastes that I never acquired, how did they come up with Giosue Carducci, Yasunari Kawabata and Shmuel Agnon?
I’m not suggesting that Carducci, Kawabata and Agnon, aren’t worthy of literary laurels. How could I? I’d never even heard of them. What I do know is that they wrote in Italian, Japanese and Hebrew, respectively. Are you going to tell me that anyone at the Swedish Academy read them in their original language? Baloney! It’s my hunch that periodically the Swedes simply decide it’s Japan’s turn to win or Italy’s or Israel’s.
What makes me even more convinced this to be the case is the hooey they concoct as a reason for lavishing fame and fortune on the poor sap. About Carducci, they rhapsodized: “A tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces.” About Kawabata: “For his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind.” And in praise of Agnon: “For his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people.”
And then there’s poor Wole Soyinka, the pride and joy of Nigeria, who had to stand there in his best bib and tucker and keep a straight face while some Swedish gentleman actually said, “Mr. Soyinka, who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones, fashions the drama of existence.”
I suppose the fellow who writes this stuff will some day win a Nobel Prize of his own “for churning out high-sounding bilge year in and year out, expressing the Scandinavian fondness for unfathomable twaddle.”
For good measure, between 1901 and 1910, which was when Sam Clemens died, they managed to give the Prize to the likes of Sully Prudhomme, Christian Mommsen, Bjorstjerne Bjornson, Frederic Mistral, Jose Echegaray y Eizaguirre, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Rudolf Eucken, Selma Lagerlof and Paul Heyse, but not the author of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Life on the Mississippi.” I wonder if Sully or Jose or Bjorstjerne thought, when they received the good news, that they might have gotten Mark Twain’s mail by mistake.
But even the obvious shortcomings of the Literature award can’t compare to the absurdity of the Peace Prize. It isn’t simply that the award has gone home with such villains as Le Duc Tho, Kofi Annan and Yasser Arafat. It has also left Sweden in Jimmy Carter’s suitcase and Al Gore’s handbag, and in the luggage of scores of other self-righteous, lame-brained pacifists over the past 108 years.
This isn’t to suggest that people like George Marshall, Elie Wiesel and the Dalai Lama, don’t deserve our good thoughts, but I’d have thought better of them if they’d simply said thanks, but no thanks. I mean, the chairman of the Peace committee, in honoring Carter, made it clear that they were using him as a means by which to vilify President Bush for invading Iraq. And there you have a clue to the reason I despise Carter and the Norwegian Nobel Committee -- and please don’t ask me why the Swedes out-sourced the Peace Prize selection to Norway, keeping the important ones for themselves. Perhaps the Swedes figured that the Norwegians simply weren’t up to any heavy lifting. In any case, I hate Carter because he was so hungry for the tawdry honor that he grasped it to his bosom even though he knew he was only getting it because the presenters needed a stalking horse in order to insult his president and his country.
But, Carter aside, I hate the Peace Prize because it never goes to anyone who is waging war. These knuckleheads refuse to acknowledge that sometimes peace can only be achieved by those willing to confront and defeat evil. Peace, after all, is easy enough to achieve. All you need is to never oppose tyranny. So it is that no awards were presented between 1914 and 1919, except in 1917, when it went to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Then again, no peace awards between 1939 and 1943. Then, in 1944 -- surprise, surprise -- the International Committee of the Red Cross won again.
Inasmuch as they often honor groups and not merely individuals, wouldn’t you think the Scandinavians would have acknowledged their own debt to the R.A.F. and to the British civilians who risked their lives to rescue the English army at Dunkirk, or to the U.S. military, for that matter? After all, the Nazis were well on their way to weaning the Swedes and the Norwegians off meatballs and herring and on to bratwurst and sauerkraut.
Why didn’t they give it to FDR or, better yet, Winston Churchill? No, Sir Winston didn’t win a Nobel Prize for helping to defeat Nazi Germany. He finally got it in 1953 -- for Literature, for-crying-out-loud! -- “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted humansvalues.”
I can’t help thinking that Sir Winston would have preferred winning it “for having tied a tin can to der fuhrer’s fanny.”
As for the latest recipient, how can anyone dare suggest that Barack Obama, who, in spite of not even being able to bring the Olympic Games to Chicago, hasn’t done every bit as much to bring peace to the world as Carter, Le Duc Tho and Yasser Arafat?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Letters To The Editor
by Burt Prelutsky
I hear from readers all over America complaining that their local newspapers seem to be nothing more than house organs for the Democrats. You have to wonder if every last daily is being subsidized by George Soros because they all seem to be losing readership and ad revenue at record rates, and yet they persist in reviling half of their potential subscribers.
My wife often wonders why I continue subscribing to the L.A. Times. There used to be three reasons, but that was before I discovered that I could access box scores at MajorLeagueBaseball.com. One, because I kept threatening to cancel my subscription, they finally offered me a rate that comes close to their paying me to take it. Two, it lets me know exactly what lies and propaganda the other side is trumpeting without my having to tune in the likes of Chris Matthews, Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann.
It isn’t simply the editorial page and the op-ed page that is devoted, Pravda-like, to heralding the greatness of our glorious leader. It is every single section of the newspaper, including book and movie reviews, business and even the letters to the editor. It was bad enough when, for eight years, one couldn’t escape the constant harping on George Bush, but now that Obama is president, all the jeers have turned to cheers.
I find it very telling that although I wrote a humor column for the Times for 11 years in the days when it took its journalistic responsibilities seriously, I can no longer even get a letter published.
Just recently, I had occasion to write a couple. Although I am not the most ecologically-minded person in the world, I do hate to waste perfectly fine letters just because the Times refuses to acknowledge that there are any conservatives in Los Angeles.
In the first case, I was responding to a piece columnist Steve Lopez had written about traveling out to the north end of L.A. County to find out what sort of jackasses liked Glenn Beck. Naturally, he managed to find exactly what he was looking for. In response to his column, which was headlined “Looking for Common Ground in Glenn Beck Country,” I wrote: “After reading Steve Lopez’s not very subtle attack on Glenn Beck. It occurred to me that Beck’s combined radio and TV audience is probably in the range of five or six million, which is several times larger than the circulation of the Times. Still, I am willing to wager that if I drove out to Santa Clarita or any other community in Southern California, I could find many more numbskulls who read the Times than tune into Beck. Attempting to demean Mr. Beck, who is far less partisan and far more fact-based than your newspaper, by holding up a few of his fans to ridicule neither makes Lopez’s case nor burnishes your own tarnished image.”
In the second instance, I responded to a news story headlined “Obama Aide Quits, Slams Critics.” I wrote: “It is quite obvious why an avowed radical community organizer like Van Jones would be appointed a czar in the Obama administration. That comes under the heading of birds of a feather. However, inasmuch as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah, have been reporting about this guy for a long time now, the question is why the Times never even got around to mentioning Jones until the day after he walked the plank. You have to admire the gall of Mr. Jones, though. Not everyone would refer to a number of videos in which he declared himself a Communist who despises all Republicans, and announced his intention to radically transform America, as ‘lies, distortions…and a smear campaign.’
“By the way, in case it, too, has escaped your attention, Jeff Jones, who co-founded the terrorist group, the Weather Underground with none other than Bill Ayers, the fellow presidential candidate Barack Obama could barely recall ever having met, is currently a close advisor to President Obama. Sincerely, Burt Prelutsky”
I hear from readers all over America complaining that their local newspapers seem to be nothing more than house organs for the Democrats. You have to wonder if every last daily is being subsidized by George Soros because they all seem to be losing readership and ad revenue at record rates, and yet they persist in reviling half of their potential subscribers.
My wife often wonders why I continue subscribing to the L.A. Times. There used to be three reasons, but that was before I discovered that I could access box scores at MajorLeagueBaseball.com. One, because I kept threatening to cancel my subscription, they finally offered me a rate that comes close to their paying me to take it. Two, it lets me know exactly what lies and propaganda the other side is trumpeting without my having to tune in the likes of Chris Matthews, Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann.
It isn’t simply the editorial page and the op-ed page that is devoted, Pravda-like, to heralding the greatness of our glorious leader. It is every single section of the newspaper, including book and movie reviews, business and even the letters to the editor. It was bad enough when, for eight years, one couldn’t escape the constant harping on George Bush, but now that Obama is president, all the jeers have turned to cheers.
I find it very telling that although I wrote a humor column for the Times for 11 years in the days when it took its journalistic responsibilities seriously, I can no longer even get a letter published.
Just recently, I had occasion to write a couple. Although I am not the most ecologically-minded person in the world, I do hate to waste perfectly fine letters just because the Times refuses to acknowledge that there are any conservatives in Los Angeles.
In the first case, I was responding to a piece columnist Steve Lopez had written about traveling out to the north end of L.A. County to find out what sort of jackasses liked Glenn Beck. Naturally, he managed to find exactly what he was looking for. In response to his column, which was headlined “Looking for Common Ground in Glenn Beck Country,” I wrote: “After reading Steve Lopez’s not very subtle attack on Glenn Beck. It occurred to me that Beck’s combined radio and TV audience is probably in the range of five or six million, which is several times larger than the circulation of the Times. Still, I am willing to wager that if I drove out to Santa Clarita or any other community in Southern California, I could find many more numbskulls who read the Times than tune into Beck. Attempting to demean Mr. Beck, who is far less partisan and far more fact-based than your newspaper, by holding up a few of his fans to ridicule neither makes Lopez’s case nor burnishes your own tarnished image.”
In the second instance, I responded to a news story headlined “Obama Aide Quits, Slams Critics.” I wrote: “It is quite obvious why an avowed radical community organizer like Van Jones would be appointed a czar in the Obama administration. That comes under the heading of birds of a feather. However, inasmuch as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah, have been reporting about this guy for a long time now, the question is why the Times never even got around to mentioning Jones until the day after he walked the plank. You have to admire the gall of Mr. Jones, though. Not everyone would refer to a number of videos in which he declared himself a Communist who despises all Republicans, and announced his intention to radically transform America, as ‘lies, distortions…and a smear campaign.’
“By the way, in case it, too, has escaped your attention, Jeff Jones, who co-founded the terrorist group, the Weather Underground with none other than Bill Ayers, the fellow presidential candidate Barack Obama could barely recall ever having met, is currently a close advisor to President Obama. Sincerely, Burt Prelutsky”
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
First, Kill All The Politicians
by Burt Prelutsky
Back in 1954, a lawyer named Joseph Welch became famous virtually overnight when he looked contemptuously at Joe McCarthy and said, “Have you no decency, sir, at long last?” As clumsy as the line was, he said it so effectively that the next thing we knew, Otto Preminger had hired him to play a judge and deliver equally sanctimonious lines in “Anatomy of a Murder.”
The question of decency runs through my head every time I see or hear a celebrity or a politician these days. For instance, I keep asking myself if I am more disgusted by what Roman Polanski did some 30-odd years ago or what his legion of defenders are presently saying in his defense. Just because he directed a couple of good movies and a lot of lousy ones, we have most of Hollywood signing petitions on his behalf. Whoopi Goldberg, who was apparently paying close attention when Bill Clinton was parsing the word “is,” has gone so far as insisting that what Polanski did to the 13-year-old girl wasn’t really rape. The problem with calling these Hollywood freaks on the carpet is that the more repulsed that normal human beings are with them, the more convinced they are that they’re as sophisticated, not to mention morally superior, as their press releases claim they are.
Some time ago, I suggested that when John Huston’s degenerate character, Noah Cross, dragged his young granddaughter off into the night at the end of “Chinatown,” Roman Polanski was the only person who actually believed he had directed a movie with a happy ending. Now, thanks to the 150 show biz celebrities who have signed a petition demanding that the child-rapist go free, I see how terribly naïve I was.
Or consider Jimmy Carter, who has spent the past three decades cozying up to the likes of Yasser Arafat and working overtime to prove that people who call him America’s biggest anti-Semite aren’t just whistling “Dixie.”
But, not content with merely condemning Israel’s Jews, he branched out a while ago and condemned Southern Baptists for oppressing their womenfolk, going so far as to turn his back on the church he has belonged to for his entire life. No word yet whether Mr. Peanut plans to join up with the Sunnis or the Shi’a.
Then we have an ex-vice president, Al Gore, who has spent the past several years getting rich in a way that would have had Charles Ponzi gnashing his teeth in envy. First, Gore announced that the earth was heating up and that people in Kansas would soon be up to their knees in the Pacific Ocean. Then, when Mother Nature pulled a fast one and cooled things down slightly, as is her wont, Gore didn’t miss a beat. Instead, he said we were undergoing climate change. People didn’t know what that meant, but Gore, in those ominous tones he has mastered, said it was every bit as bad as global warming and, so, the money just kept rolling in.
Well, far be it from me to miss out on a good thing. So it was that I, too, began paying close attention to the weather. After all, it was obviously a growth industry. What I found to my horror was that things were far scarier than Mr. Gore, at his spookiest, had suggested. For instance, even here in Los Angeles, where we generally take weather for granted, I noticed that between January and July, the median temperature rose from 63 to 93, an average increase of five degrees a month. The increase was so gradual that, like the frog in the pot of boiling water, I’m not sure I would have even noticed if I hadn’t been paying such close attention. Now, it’s not my wish to panic anyone, but if the trend continues at that rate, by the end of 2010, the average temperature will be close to…180 degrees!
In order to do further study, I’m hoping to obtain a federal grant so that I can get a really good thermometer and several notebooks and pencils. I believe I can handle the entire job for about $10 million.
While we’re on the subject of numbers, and while I’m waiting for my $10 million piece of the stimulus package, I recently checked out the ages at which our 43 presidents were first elected. (Note: Even though Barack Obama is the 44th president, he’s only the 43rd individual to hold the office. The problem is that one man, Grover Cleveland, a born troublemaker, was both the 22nd and the 24th president, having been elected in 1884 and then again in 1892.)
In any case, as I was saying, I discovered that 26 of our presidents were elected in their 50s, while nine of them were first elected in their 60s. Some of those 35 men were fine, and included the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Lincoln; while others, such as Wilson, Harding, Hoover, FDR, LBJ, Nixon and Carter, left a good deal to be desired.
What I found most telling was that the half dozen men who were initially elected in their 40s (Pierce, Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, Clinton and Obama) don’t make a very impressive case for youth. On the other hand, the only one who was elected in his 70s was Ronald Reagan. Now I’m not saying I’m another Reagan, but I will be in my 70s by the time 2012 rolls around and, assuming I’ve completed my weather study by then and have somehow avoided being burned to a crisp, I would consider it an honor and a privilege to run against that young whippersnapper, Barack Obama.
In addition to my age, two other things I’d have going for me are, one, I didn’t attend an Ivy League school and, perhaps best of all, I’ve never been a lawyer.
Finally, I fully expect that any day now Robert Gibbs will announce that Rio de Janeiro has been named Chicago’s sister city and, so, thanks to the efforts of Barack, and the sacrifices of Michelle and Oprah, Chicago will, in a sense, be co-hosting the 2016 Olympics.
And in other totally unrelated news, Gibbs will inform the media that President Obama has declared war on Denmark.
Back in 1954, a lawyer named Joseph Welch became famous virtually overnight when he looked contemptuously at Joe McCarthy and said, “Have you no decency, sir, at long last?” As clumsy as the line was, he said it so effectively that the next thing we knew, Otto Preminger had hired him to play a judge and deliver equally sanctimonious lines in “Anatomy of a Murder.”
The question of decency runs through my head every time I see or hear a celebrity or a politician these days. For instance, I keep asking myself if I am more disgusted by what Roman Polanski did some 30-odd years ago or what his legion of defenders are presently saying in his defense. Just because he directed a couple of good movies and a lot of lousy ones, we have most of Hollywood signing petitions on his behalf. Whoopi Goldberg, who was apparently paying close attention when Bill Clinton was parsing the word “is,” has gone so far as insisting that what Polanski did to the 13-year-old girl wasn’t really rape. The problem with calling these Hollywood freaks on the carpet is that the more repulsed that normal human beings are with them, the more convinced they are that they’re as sophisticated, not to mention morally superior, as their press releases claim they are.
Some time ago, I suggested that when John Huston’s degenerate character, Noah Cross, dragged his young granddaughter off into the night at the end of “Chinatown,” Roman Polanski was the only person who actually believed he had directed a movie with a happy ending. Now, thanks to the 150 show biz celebrities who have signed a petition demanding that the child-rapist go free, I see how terribly naïve I was.
Or consider Jimmy Carter, who has spent the past three decades cozying up to the likes of Yasser Arafat and working overtime to prove that people who call him America’s biggest anti-Semite aren’t just whistling “Dixie.”
But, not content with merely condemning Israel’s Jews, he branched out a while ago and condemned Southern Baptists for oppressing their womenfolk, going so far as to turn his back on the church he has belonged to for his entire life. No word yet whether Mr. Peanut plans to join up with the Sunnis or the Shi’a.
Then we have an ex-vice president, Al Gore, who has spent the past several years getting rich in a way that would have had Charles Ponzi gnashing his teeth in envy. First, Gore announced that the earth was heating up and that people in Kansas would soon be up to their knees in the Pacific Ocean. Then, when Mother Nature pulled a fast one and cooled things down slightly, as is her wont, Gore didn’t miss a beat. Instead, he said we were undergoing climate change. People didn’t know what that meant, but Gore, in those ominous tones he has mastered, said it was every bit as bad as global warming and, so, the money just kept rolling in.
Well, far be it from me to miss out on a good thing. So it was that I, too, began paying close attention to the weather. After all, it was obviously a growth industry. What I found to my horror was that things were far scarier than Mr. Gore, at his spookiest, had suggested. For instance, even here in Los Angeles, where we generally take weather for granted, I noticed that between January and July, the median temperature rose from 63 to 93, an average increase of five degrees a month. The increase was so gradual that, like the frog in the pot of boiling water, I’m not sure I would have even noticed if I hadn’t been paying such close attention. Now, it’s not my wish to panic anyone, but if the trend continues at that rate, by the end of 2010, the average temperature will be close to…180 degrees!
In order to do further study, I’m hoping to obtain a federal grant so that I can get a really good thermometer and several notebooks and pencils. I believe I can handle the entire job for about $10 million.
While we’re on the subject of numbers, and while I’m waiting for my $10 million piece of the stimulus package, I recently checked out the ages at which our 43 presidents were first elected. (Note: Even though Barack Obama is the 44th president, he’s only the 43rd individual to hold the office. The problem is that one man, Grover Cleveland, a born troublemaker, was both the 22nd and the 24th president, having been elected in 1884 and then again in 1892.)
In any case, as I was saying, I discovered that 26 of our presidents were elected in their 50s, while nine of them were first elected in their 60s. Some of those 35 men were fine, and included the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Lincoln; while others, such as Wilson, Harding, Hoover, FDR, LBJ, Nixon and Carter, left a good deal to be desired.
What I found most telling was that the half dozen men who were initially elected in their 40s (Pierce, Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, Clinton and Obama) don’t make a very impressive case for youth. On the other hand, the only one who was elected in his 70s was Ronald Reagan. Now I’m not saying I’m another Reagan, but I will be in my 70s by the time 2012 rolls around and, assuming I’ve completed my weather study by then and have somehow avoided being burned to a crisp, I would consider it an honor and a privilege to run against that young whippersnapper, Barack Obama.
In addition to my age, two other things I’d have going for me are, one, I didn’t attend an Ivy League school and, perhaps best of all, I’ve never been a lawyer.
Finally, I fully expect that any day now Robert Gibbs will announce that Rio de Janeiro has been named Chicago’s sister city and, so, thanks to the efforts of Barack, and the sacrifices of Michelle and Oprah, Chicago will, in a sense, be co-hosting the 2016 Olympics.
And in other totally unrelated news, Gibbs will inform the media that President Obama has declared war on Denmark.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Days Of Infamy
by Burt Prelutsky
There are certain dates that are indelibly etched in our minds because they were drummed into us in school, such as the 1066 Battle of Hastings; some because they commemorate joyous events such as July 4th, December 25th or the births of our children; and some because they remind us to never forget how quickly everyday life can be turned into something horrific.
The first of three such dates for Americans is 12/7/41. That was, as FDR put it, a day of infamy. It was a Sunday between Thanksgiving and Christmas when, without warning, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, killing 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians.
The second of the nightmarish dates was 9/11/01 when 19 Islamics hijacked four airliners and murdered 2,998 human beings, most of whom were Americans.
The third such date was 11/4/08, when 64,385,746 American voters decided it would be a fine idea to vote for a man with an Islamic name, an Islamic upbringing, a man who said that if push came to shove, he would side with Islamics.
If you lost loved ones in Hawaii 68 years ago or in Manhattan 8 years ago, I can fully understand why you would disagree with me when I insist that the third of those dates is the most tragic. The reason I voice that opinion is because, aside from the 5,401 innocent lives lost, ships, planes and skyscrapers can always be re-built. But once lost, freedom and liberty can not always be regained.
There are certain dates that are indelibly etched in our minds because they were drummed into us in school, such as the 1066 Battle of Hastings; some because they commemorate joyous events such as July 4th, December 25th or the births of our children; and some because they remind us to never forget how quickly everyday life can be turned into something horrific.
The first of three such dates for Americans is 12/7/41. That was, as FDR put it, a day of infamy. It was a Sunday between Thanksgiving and Christmas when, without warning, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, killing 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians.
The second of the nightmarish dates was 9/11/01 when 19 Islamics hijacked four airliners and murdered 2,998 human beings, most of whom were Americans.
The third such date was 11/4/08, when 64,385,746 American voters decided it would be a fine idea to vote for a man with an Islamic name, an Islamic upbringing, a man who said that if push came to shove, he would side with Islamics.
If you lost loved ones in Hawaii 68 years ago or in Manhattan 8 years ago, I can fully understand why you would disagree with me when I insist that the third of those dates is the most tragic. The reason I voice that opinion is because, aside from the 5,401 innocent lives lost, ships, planes and skyscrapers can always be re-built. But once lost, freedom and liberty can not always be regained.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Regarding Jimmy Carter And Other Goobers
by Burt Prelutsky
It used to be said of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers that he gave her class and she gave him sex appeal. These days, you have actors and liberal politicians teaming up. But, unlike Astaire and Rogers, which was a perfect example of symbiosis, the actors give politicians money and publicity, and the politicians allegedly provide the actors with gravitas. But when it comes to class, I’m afraid both groups are plumb out of luck.
In terms of their professions, however, they are strangely similar. Both call for basically intuitive skills and the ability to lie convincingly. That’s not to say that, through training and experience, members of each group can’t hone their talents, but, just between us, neither profession is all that difficult to master. If acting was hard, such children as Jackie Coogan, Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien, Bobby Driscoll, Hayley Mills and Fred Savage, couldn’t have been as good as they were, and such chowderheads as Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Whoopi Goldberg and Barbra Streisand, wouldn’t have all those Oscars on their mantels.
As for achieving success in politics, what more need be said than that Barney Frank, Patrick Leahy, John Murtha, Maxine Waters, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy and Henry Waxman, are still drawing government paychecks?
Speaking of people who are still around and proving that, unlike old soldiers, politicians don’t fade away, but, instead, continue to make damn fools of themselves, we have Jimmy Carter. In his latest attempt to prove that his disastrous administration was no mere four-year fluke, he recently announced, “The male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.”
He added, “It also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.”
Rolling up his rhetorical sleeves, he concluded, “At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime.”
If you’re curious as to what ultimately opened Carter’s eyes to the atrocities committed in the name of Allah by his erstwhile friends in the Islamic world, wondering whether it was the slavery, the denial of education and basic human rights or that old Muslim standby, genital mutilation, wonder no more. You see Carter wasn’t condemning the barbaric way that Islamics treat their women, he was merely explaining why, at the age of 84, he was leaving the Southern Baptist Church!
Well, I, for one, am heartened that someone finally blew the whistle on the way those doggone Baptists are always forcing the womenfolk to stay in their kitchens for hours on end cooking up Thanksgiving dinners and 4th of July potlucks. It’s simply intolerable that such things are still taking place in this day and age in what is allegedly a civilized nation. Even the Muslims can’t imagine why Baptist women continue to put up with it.
I anticipate that the next news flash will be the announcement that the 39th president, aka Mr. Peanut, has converted and that, henceforth, he will be known as Osama bin Carter.
It used to be said of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers that he gave her class and she gave him sex appeal. These days, you have actors and liberal politicians teaming up. But, unlike Astaire and Rogers, which was a perfect example of symbiosis, the actors give politicians money and publicity, and the politicians allegedly provide the actors with gravitas. But when it comes to class, I’m afraid both groups are plumb out of luck.
In terms of their professions, however, they are strangely similar. Both call for basically intuitive skills and the ability to lie convincingly. That’s not to say that, through training and experience, members of each group can’t hone their talents, but, just between us, neither profession is all that difficult to master. If acting was hard, such children as Jackie Coogan, Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien, Bobby Driscoll, Hayley Mills and Fred Savage, couldn’t have been as good as they were, and such chowderheads as Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Whoopi Goldberg and Barbra Streisand, wouldn’t have all those Oscars on their mantels.
As for achieving success in politics, what more need be said than that Barney Frank, Patrick Leahy, John Murtha, Maxine Waters, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy and Henry Waxman, are still drawing government paychecks?
Speaking of people who are still around and proving that, unlike old soldiers, politicians don’t fade away, but, instead, continue to make damn fools of themselves, we have Jimmy Carter. In his latest attempt to prove that his disastrous administration was no mere four-year fluke, he recently announced, “The male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.”
He added, “It also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.”
Rolling up his rhetorical sleeves, he concluded, “At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime.”
If you’re curious as to what ultimately opened Carter’s eyes to the atrocities committed in the name of Allah by his erstwhile friends in the Islamic world, wondering whether it was the slavery, the denial of education and basic human rights or that old Muslim standby, genital mutilation, wonder no more. You see Carter wasn’t condemning the barbaric way that Islamics treat their women, he was merely explaining why, at the age of 84, he was leaving the Southern Baptist Church!
Well, I, for one, am heartened that someone finally blew the whistle on the way those doggone Baptists are always forcing the womenfolk to stay in their kitchens for hours on end cooking up Thanksgiving dinners and 4th of July potlucks. It’s simply intolerable that such things are still taking place in this day and age in what is allegedly a civilized nation. Even the Muslims can’t imagine why Baptist women continue to put up with it.
I anticipate that the next news flash will be the announcement that the 39th president, aka Mr. Peanut, has converted and that, henceforth, he will be known as Osama bin Carter.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Politically Incorrect Observations
by Burt Prelutsky
I was taken aback when President Obama said he was proud of the Afghani people who voted in their recent election in spite of being intimidated by the Taliban. I mean, how was it he never said he was proud of American Republicans who voted in spite of being intimidated by the thugs from ACORN, the SEIU and the UAW?
Although I don’t watch so-called reality shows, I’ve come up with what I think would be a real humdinger. It would pit certain studio audiences against one another in a series of competitions. One week it might be the Saturday Night Live audience against Oprah’s, the following week it might be the View battling it out with Bill Maher’s team. Judging by their enthusiastic response to badly written sketches, softball interviews and inane comments, the competitions obviously couldn’t be too demanding. The contestants, for instance, might be asked to locate Florida on a map or peel three bananas within 60 seconds or add five and six without removing their shoes. Janeane Garofalo and Joy Behar could be hired as cheerleaders.
When during the presidential campaign, Sen. Obama said he saw his mission as fundamentally transforming America, what exactly did the 62 million people who voted for him think he actually meant? Put us on the metric system? Introduce the euro? What was it about America that so many people felt needed to be straightened out by a party hack from the most politically corrupt state in the Union?
Just because a star-struck judge decided that Michael Vick should only spend 18 months in jail doesn’t mean that Mr. Vick got what he deserved, and that everyone should forgive and forget his disgusting deeds. Heck, if judges got to have the final word in such matters, we would all have to accept that justice was served in 1969 when Ted Kennedy, instead of being forced to face a manslaughter rap, got a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident. Heck, I actually saw Philadelphia Eagle fans give Mr. Vick a standing ovation when he trotted out on Lincoln Financial Field. If it were up to me, I’d have given all those goons 18 months for sending such a terrible message to their kids. Besides, Plaxico Burress got a two-year sentence and all he’d done was shoot himself in the leg.
I would think that even liberals would have been up in arms when the Obama administration wanted a person’s friends and neighbors to rat him out if he opposed Obama’s health care plan. These are the same people who insisted, and quite correctly, that Richard Nixon’s Enemies List was an abomination. But at least it was a list of the man’s actual enemies. Those people really did hate Nixon. But Obama wanted to know the names of those Americans -- Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians -- who simply had the unmitigated gall to think his radical program stunk to high heaven.
Some people are wondering why Attorney General Eric Holder is going ahead with his investigation of the CIA, especially when it wasn’t that long ago that Obama said he was putting the past to rest. I think I know the reason Obama has changed his mind. It’s pretty much the same reason that Bill Clinton green-lighted the farcical missile attack on the pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan. In Clinton’s case, it was meant to knock the Monica Lewinsky affair off the front page. In Obama’s case, it’s to knock the health care debacle off the front page.
I recently read a poll that reported that the majority of Israelis believe that Obama favors the Palestinians. Well, duh. I mean if it’s not bad enough that the Community Organizer in Chief curtsied to a Saudi prince, gets angrier about homes being built in Israel than nukes being built in Iran, can’t say enough nice things about the religion of our sworn enemies and denies that we’re at war with Islamic fundamentalists, there’s the matter of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. It seems that it is dedicated solely to Palestinian interests. It has $530 million with which to fund summer camps, free movies, business classes and “promoting and preserving Palestinian cultural heritage,” whatever in hell that might be. Notable suicide bombers down through the annals of history? The programs are translated into Arabic, but not Hebrew. The education finance grants are available to candidates who must be a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip. Is my memory going or aren’t they the same folks we saw dancing in the streets on 9/11?
The ex-Mrs. William Saroyan once made a very perceptive remark about the writer, famous for writing lovingly about the Armenian community in Fresno, California. She said, “Bill loved mankind, but he hated people.”
When I look at Obama, I see a lot of Saroyan there. Although he’s made millions of dollars off his books and CDs, it’s common knowledge that he has one relative, apparently an illegal immigrant, living in public housing and another in an African village, surviving on pennies a day. But Obama keeps telling us that he’s heart-sick about the unemployed and the uninsured. Well, as H.L. Mencken once observed: “The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.”
Finally, I am getting sick and tired of American companies being intimidated by groups of black thugs. For years, we saw major companies paying extortion to Jesse Jackson because he threatened to have their products boycotted in black neighborhoods. Now we see ColorOfChange threatening to boycott companies if they dare to advertise on Glenn Beck’s TV show.
While I think boycotts are perfectly legitimate when they are done to right a moral wrong, as they were in the South in order to allow black people equal access to seats on buses and at lunch counters, I hate extortionists, whether they’re working for Al Capone or some black radical. Being poor or black or an illegal immigrant doesn’t make anyone morally superior to someone who is rich or white or a citizen. For too many years, we’ve allowed these so-called victims to assume a role they’re not entitled to, one of moral superiority.
If I owned a company and the riff-raff from ColorOfChange or ACORN or the Rainbow Coalition threatened to boycott my product, I would take out ads proclaiming that as an American, I was not about to kowtow to a bunch of thugs simply because they happened to be black.
I have a hunch that most Americans -- and by most, I’m referring to those, black and white, who don’t get their opinions from the NY Times and the Huffington Post, their talking points from Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, and their marching orders from David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel -- would respond favorably to my message, which is exactly the way decent people have always responded when bullies and tyrants have threatened their freedoms.
I was taken aback when President Obama said he was proud of the Afghani people who voted in their recent election in spite of being intimidated by the Taliban. I mean, how was it he never said he was proud of American Republicans who voted in spite of being intimidated by the thugs from ACORN, the SEIU and the UAW?
Although I don’t watch so-called reality shows, I’ve come up with what I think would be a real humdinger. It would pit certain studio audiences against one another in a series of competitions. One week it might be the Saturday Night Live audience against Oprah’s, the following week it might be the View battling it out with Bill Maher’s team. Judging by their enthusiastic response to badly written sketches, softball interviews and inane comments, the competitions obviously couldn’t be too demanding. The contestants, for instance, might be asked to locate Florida on a map or peel three bananas within 60 seconds or add five and six without removing their shoes. Janeane Garofalo and Joy Behar could be hired as cheerleaders.
When during the presidential campaign, Sen. Obama said he saw his mission as fundamentally transforming America, what exactly did the 62 million people who voted for him think he actually meant? Put us on the metric system? Introduce the euro? What was it about America that so many people felt needed to be straightened out by a party hack from the most politically corrupt state in the Union?
Just because a star-struck judge decided that Michael Vick should only spend 18 months in jail doesn’t mean that Mr. Vick got what he deserved, and that everyone should forgive and forget his disgusting deeds. Heck, if judges got to have the final word in such matters, we would all have to accept that justice was served in 1969 when Ted Kennedy, instead of being forced to face a manslaughter rap, got a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident. Heck, I actually saw Philadelphia Eagle fans give Mr. Vick a standing ovation when he trotted out on Lincoln Financial Field. If it were up to me, I’d have given all those goons 18 months for sending such a terrible message to their kids. Besides, Plaxico Burress got a two-year sentence and all he’d done was shoot himself in the leg.
I would think that even liberals would have been up in arms when the Obama administration wanted a person’s friends and neighbors to rat him out if he opposed Obama’s health care plan. These are the same people who insisted, and quite correctly, that Richard Nixon’s Enemies List was an abomination. But at least it was a list of the man’s actual enemies. Those people really did hate Nixon. But Obama wanted to know the names of those Americans -- Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians -- who simply had the unmitigated gall to think his radical program stunk to high heaven.
Some people are wondering why Attorney General Eric Holder is going ahead with his investigation of the CIA, especially when it wasn’t that long ago that Obama said he was putting the past to rest. I think I know the reason Obama has changed his mind. It’s pretty much the same reason that Bill Clinton green-lighted the farcical missile attack on the pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan. In Clinton’s case, it was meant to knock the Monica Lewinsky affair off the front page. In Obama’s case, it’s to knock the health care debacle off the front page.
I recently read a poll that reported that the majority of Israelis believe that Obama favors the Palestinians. Well, duh. I mean if it’s not bad enough that the Community Organizer in Chief curtsied to a Saudi prince, gets angrier about homes being built in Israel than nukes being built in Iran, can’t say enough nice things about the religion of our sworn enemies and denies that we’re at war with Islamic fundamentalists, there’s the matter of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. It seems that it is dedicated solely to Palestinian interests. It has $530 million with which to fund summer camps, free movies, business classes and “promoting and preserving Palestinian cultural heritage,” whatever in hell that might be. Notable suicide bombers down through the annals of history? The programs are translated into Arabic, but not Hebrew. The education finance grants are available to candidates who must be a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip. Is my memory going or aren’t they the same folks we saw dancing in the streets on 9/11?
The ex-Mrs. William Saroyan once made a very perceptive remark about the writer, famous for writing lovingly about the Armenian community in Fresno, California. She said, “Bill loved mankind, but he hated people.”
When I look at Obama, I see a lot of Saroyan there. Although he’s made millions of dollars off his books and CDs, it’s common knowledge that he has one relative, apparently an illegal immigrant, living in public housing and another in an African village, surviving on pennies a day. But Obama keeps telling us that he’s heart-sick about the unemployed and the uninsured. Well, as H.L. Mencken once observed: “The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.”
Finally, I am getting sick and tired of American companies being intimidated by groups of black thugs. For years, we saw major companies paying extortion to Jesse Jackson because he threatened to have their products boycotted in black neighborhoods. Now we see ColorOfChange threatening to boycott companies if they dare to advertise on Glenn Beck’s TV show.
While I think boycotts are perfectly legitimate when they are done to right a moral wrong, as they were in the South in order to allow black people equal access to seats on buses and at lunch counters, I hate extortionists, whether they’re working for Al Capone or some black radical. Being poor or black or an illegal immigrant doesn’t make anyone morally superior to someone who is rich or white or a citizen. For too many years, we’ve allowed these so-called victims to assume a role they’re not entitled to, one of moral superiority.
If I owned a company and the riff-raff from ColorOfChange or ACORN or the Rainbow Coalition threatened to boycott my product, I would take out ads proclaiming that as an American, I was not about to kowtow to a bunch of thugs simply because they happened to be black.
I have a hunch that most Americans -- and by most, I’m referring to those, black and white, who don’t get their opinions from the NY Times and the Huffington Post, their talking points from Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, and their marching orders from David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel -- would respond favorably to my message, which is exactly the way decent people have always responded when bullies and tyrants have threatened their freedoms.
Friday, September 25, 2009
From Red, White And Blue, To Just Plain Red
by Burt Prelutsky
Before last year’s election, I heard a lot of people claim they didn’t feel they knew who Obama really was. For my part, I felt I knew him all too well. Which was why I didn’t like him and wouldn’t have voted for him even if he’d run unopposed, which, now that I think about McCain’s campaign, was pretty much the way it was.
Boneheads would have you believe my opposition to Obama is based on racism. I, on the other hand, would insist that when a presidential candidate announces that once his energy plan is in place, our energy costs will soar; that he will bury you if you have the temerity to own a coal company; and that he believes, as he told Joe the Plumber, that it is government’s job to re-distribute wealth, what does race have to do with it? I hated all that stuff back when it was being promoted by such white con artists as Karl Marx, Josef Stalin and Saul Alinsky.
Furthermore, the way that blacks and other liberals label everyone they’re against as racists, I think conservatives should start suing these punks for slander. Make them either prove it in court or pay through the nose.
Obama would have you believe that anyone who doesn’t buy into his squandering trillions of dollars on pork, his cap & trade insanity or his attempt to turn America’s health care over to such left-wing loonies as Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers and Henry Waxman, is a racist. It’s the-one-size-fits-all insult.
When people insisted that Obama was an enigma, I assumed they just hadn’t been paying attention. In his own words, he described his coming of age politically in college when he’d begun seeking out Marxist professors for instruction, and radicals, Communists and Third World activists for companionship.
It’s funny how years ago, everybody laughed when Bill Clinton said he’d smoked marijuana, but he hadn’t inhaled. But when Obama told a much bigger whopper, one that came with cheese and fries, about sitting in a church for 20 years without ever hearing Rev. Wright utter a single unseemly remark about America or white people, I seemed to be one of the few people who found it amusing.
Even the fact that Obama chose to marry a woman who, in her college thesis, wrote that Princeton served as a perfect microcosm of racist America, tells you something about the man.
When Obama, a veteran of Chicago’s gutter politics, dismissed any connection to the likes of Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, I could hardly stop laughing. Those on the Left predictably started flapping their gums about McCarthyism, insisting that whenever conservatives bring up guilt by association, it’s a sure sign the accused is as pure as the driven snow. Which is a lot of hooey. If it’s a sure sign of anything, it’s that the accused is an unrepentant Red who longs for the days of gulags and the KGB. Guilt by association happens to be one of the surest signs of guilt there is. There is, after all, a reason that felons on parole aren’t allowed to hang out with other felons. There is a reason that your granny was likely to point out that if you lie down with dogs, you were very likely to rise up with fleas.
There are conservatives who see FDR when they look at Obama, but I’m not one of them. There’s no doubt that Obama shares FDR’s dream of centralizing all power and wealth in the hands of the federal government, and whereas FDR liked and admired Joseph Stalin, Obama has fond feelings for Castro and Chavez. (Chavez, by the way, suggested to Castro, after Obama took control of GM, that there was a very real possibility that the two of them would eventually wind up to the right of the President. He may have meant it as a joke, but I don’t think so.) The major difference I see between Roosevelt and Obama is that I believe FDR, for all his faults, loved this country and regarded it as a special place based on a very special set of principles, whereas Obama believes it’s an arrogant country run solely by and for rich white people.
But, of course, by this time, even lunkheads who managed to sleep all the way through 2008 should be able to figure out that, as president, Obama hasn’t changed his colors, but only his address. His circle of acquaintances has certainly widened, but it hasn’t improved. All you have to do is look at the thugs in ACORN and the SEIU, at people like self-proclaimed Communist Van Jones, who serves as one of Obama’s czars, and Jeff Jones, another close advisor, who joined with Bill Ayers in creating the terrorist group known as the Weathermen.
And, lest we forget, Attorney General Holder, who has now decided to prosecute members of the CIA whose gravest sin was doing what needed to be done to protect America from a recurrence of 9/11, but decided to drop all charges against the Black Panther pluguglies who disenfranchised white voters by scaring them away from the polls. For anyone who knows the history of the anti-slavery movement in America, it’s certainly ironic that these days blacks are in the business of intimidating Republicans on behalf of their Democratic masters. Ironic and more than a little bit disgusting.
By now, I’m sure you’re aware that there’s a concerted effort to get Glenn Beck knocked off FOX by scaring off his sponsors. Even though I’m a fan of his and even though I believe in free speech, I have no problem with Americans trying to generate boycotts of goods and services. For instance, I happen to be all in favor of boycotting Scotland for sending Abdel Basset al-Megrahi back to a hero’s welcome in Libya, so there will be no shillelaghs, tams or bagpipes on my Christmas shopping list this year.
Still, before we get too big for our moral britches, we should keep in mind that
whereas one football player got two years for merely shooting himself in the leg, another served a scant 18 months for hanging, beating, drowning and electrocuting, a large number of dogs. Therefore, I have no moral objection to ColorOfChange, a black activist group co-founded by that very same Van Jones, from threatening to boycott companies that dared to sponsor Beck’s TV show.
But, I think it should be noted that the guy who currently runs ColorOfChange is James Rucker. Mr. Rucker formerly worked for MoveOn.org, a left-wing propaganda organ financed largely by George Soros, yet another ex-con in Obama’s inner circle. Soros is also the fellow who offered to help his own mother commit suicide. While it’s true that she was a member of the Hemlock Society, it certainly helps explain why Soros thinks so highly of Obama’s approach to revolutionizing health care for seniors in America.
If anyone questions my use of “left-wing propaganda organ” to describe MoveOn.org, let me just say that when I paid a recent visit to their website, the first thing I saw was a picture of an old man holding a sign that read: “83% of Americans Favor Obamacare.” God knows I rarely quibble with my elders -- and hope that, impressed with my shining example, those people younger than 69 won’t quibble with me -- but unless there was very tiny print on the sign and what it actually said was, “83% of Americans who belong to MoveOn.org Favor Obamacare” or “83% of Americans Who Are in George Soros’s Will Favor Obamacare,” that’s a bald-faced lie. Actually, if you reversed the eight and the three, you’d be far closer to the truth.
As I was saying, ColorOfChange has every right to try to persuade companies to withhold their advertising dollars from Glenn Beck. In the same way, there’s nothing to prevent all of you from withholding your own dollars from the likes of Proctor & Gamble, Sargento Cheese, S.C. Johnson, Men’s Wearhouse, Lawyers.com, GEICO and State Farm Insurance, and letting them know what you think of companies that allow themselves to be intimidated by a small group of nasty, self-righteous radicals. (I have been told by a reliable source that there are four or five other companies that have knuckled under, but I’ve been unable to identify them. It’s telling, though, that ColorOfChange keeps insisting that they got over 30 companies to turn tail, even though most of those they’ve named never sponsored Beck’s show or anything else on FOX.)
Finally, I could hardly believe my ears when Barney Frank told a woman at his town hall meeting that arguing with her would be like arguing with his dining room table. His usual arrogance and bad manners aside, I would actually pay good money to see Barney Frank debate his dining room table. What’s more, I’d give odds and take the table.
Before last year’s election, I heard a lot of people claim they didn’t feel they knew who Obama really was. For my part, I felt I knew him all too well. Which was why I didn’t like him and wouldn’t have voted for him even if he’d run unopposed, which, now that I think about McCain’s campaign, was pretty much the way it was.
Boneheads would have you believe my opposition to Obama is based on racism. I, on the other hand, would insist that when a presidential candidate announces that once his energy plan is in place, our energy costs will soar; that he will bury you if you have the temerity to own a coal company; and that he believes, as he told Joe the Plumber, that it is government’s job to re-distribute wealth, what does race have to do with it? I hated all that stuff back when it was being promoted by such white con artists as Karl Marx, Josef Stalin and Saul Alinsky.
Furthermore, the way that blacks and other liberals label everyone they’re against as racists, I think conservatives should start suing these punks for slander. Make them either prove it in court or pay through the nose.
Obama would have you believe that anyone who doesn’t buy into his squandering trillions of dollars on pork, his cap & trade insanity or his attempt to turn America’s health care over to such left-wing loonies as Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers and Henry Waxman, is a racist. It’s the-one-size-fits-all insult.
When people insisted that Obama was an enigma, I assumed they just hadn’t been paying attention. In his own words, he described his coming of age politically in college when he’d begun seeking out Marxist professors for instruction, and radicals, Communists and Third World activists for companionship.
It’s funny how years ago, everybody laughed when Bill Clinton said he’d smoked marijuana, but he hadn’t inhaled. But when Obama told a much bigger whopper, one that came with cheese and fries, about sitting in a church for 20 years without ever hearing Rev. Wright utter a single unseemly remark about America or white people, I seemed to be one of the few people who found it amusing.
Even the fact that Obama chose to marry a woman who, in her college thesis, wrote that Princeton served as a perfect microcosm of racist America, tells you something about the man.
When Obama, a veteran of Chicago’s gutter politics, dismissed any connection to the likes of Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, I could hardly stop laughing. Those on the Left predictably started flapping their gums about McCarthyism, insisting that whenever conservatives bring up guilt by association, it’s a sure sign the accused is as pure as the driven snow. Which is a lot of hooey. If it’s a sure sign of anything, it’s that the accused is an unrepentant Red who longs for the days of gulags and the KGB. Guilt by association happens to be one of the surest signs of guilt there is. There is, after all, a reason that felons on parole aren’t allowed to hang out with other felons. There is a reason that your granny was likely to point out that if you lie down with dogs, you were very likely to rise up with fleas.
There are conservatives who see FDR when they look at Obama, but I’m not one of them. There’s no doubt that Obama shares FDR’s dream of centralizing all power and wealth in the hands of the federal government, and whereas FDR liked and admired Joseph Stalin, Obama has fond feelings for Castro and Chavez. (Chavez, by the way, suggested to Castro, after Obama took control of GM, that there was a very real possibility that the two of them would eventually wind up to the right of the President. He may have meant it as a joke, but I don’t think so.) The major difference I see between Roosevelt and Obama is that I believe FDR, for all his faults, loved this country and regarded it as a special place based on a very special set of principles, whereas Obama believes it’s an arrogant country run solely by and for rich white people.
But, of course, by this time, even lunkheads who managed to sleep all the way through 2008 should be able to figure out that, as president, Obama hasn’t changed his colors, but only his address. His circle of acquaintances has certainly widened, but it hasn’t improved. All you have to do is look at the thugs in ACORN and the SEIU, at people like self-proclaimed Communist Van Jones, who serves as one of Obama’s czars, and Jeff Jones, another close advisor, who joined with Bill Ayers in creating the terrorist group known as the Weathermen.
And, lest we forget, Attorney General Holder, who has now decided to prosecute members of the CIA whose gravest sin was doing what needed to be done to protect America from a recurrence of 9/11, but decided to drop all charges against the Black Panther pluguglies who disenfranchised white voters by scaring them away from the polls. For anyone who knows the history of the anti-slavery movement in America, it’s certainly ironic that these days blacks are in the business of intimidating Republicans on behalf of their Democratic masters. Ironic and more than a little bit disgusting.
By now, I’m sure you’re aware that there’s a concerted effort to get Glenn Beck knocked off FOX by scaring off his sponsors. Even though I’m a fan of his and even though I believe in free speech, I have no problem with Americans trying to generate boycotts of goods and services. For instance, I happen to be all in favor of boycotting Scotland for sending Abdel Basset al-Megrahi back to a hero’s welcome in Libya, so there will be no shillelaghs, tams or bagpipes on my Christmas shopping list this year.
Still, before we get too big for our moral britches, we should keep in mind that
whereas one football player got two years for merely shooting himself in the leg, another served a scant 18 months for hanging, beating, drowning and electrocuting, a large number of dogs. Therefore, I have no moral objection to ColorOfChange, a black activist group co-founded by that very same Van Jones, from threatening to boycott companies that dared to sponsor Beck’s TV show.
But, I think it should be noted that the guy who currently runs ColorOfChange is James Rucker. Mr. Rucker formerly worked for MoveOn.org, a left-wing propaganda organ financed largely by George Soros, yet another ex-con in Obama’s inner circle. Soros is also the fellow who offered to help his own mother commit suicide. While it’s true that she was a member of the Hemlock Society, it certainly helps explain why Soros thinks so highly of Obama’s approach to revolutionizing health care for seniors in America.
If anyone questions my use of “left-wing propaganda organ” to describe MoveOn.org, let me just say that when I paid a recent visit to their website, the first thing I saw was a picture of an old man holding a sign that read: “83% of Americans Favor Obamacare.” God knows I rarely quibble with my elders -- and hope that, impressed with my shining example, those people younger than 69 won’t quibble with me -- but unless there was very tiny print on the sign and what it actually said was, “83% of Americans who belong to MoveOn.org Favor Obamacare” or “83% of Americans Who Are in George Soros’s Will Favor Obamacare,” that’s a bald-faced lie. Actually, if you reversed the eight and the three, you’d be far closer to the truth.
As I was saying, ColorOfChange has every right to try to persuade companies to withhold their advertising dollars from Glenn Beck. In the same way, there’s nothing to prevent all of you from withholding your own dollars from the likes of Proctor & Gamble, Sargento Cheese, S.C. Johnson, Men’s Wearhouse, Lawyers.com, GEICO and State Farm Insurance, and letting them know what you think of companies that allow themselves to be intimidated by a small group of nasty, self-righteous radicals. (I have been told by a reliable source that there are four or five other companies that have knuckled under, but I’ve been unable to identify them. It’s telling, though, that ColorOfChange keeps insisting that they got over 30 companies to turn tail, even though most of those they’ve named never sponsored Beck’s show or anything else on FOX.)
Finally, I could hardly believe my ears when Barney Frank told a woman at his town hall meeting that arguing with her would be like arguing with his dining room table. His usual arrogance and bad manners aside, I would actually pay good money to see Barney Frank debate his dining room table. What’s more, I’d give odds and take the table.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Re-Arranging The Deck Chairs On The Titanic
by Burt Prelutsky
Sometimes, I must confess, I find myself feeling like one of those cursed individuals like Job and Sisyphus. In my case, the curse takes the form of trying to be rational in a mad world. My particular albatross is trying to make sense of the liberal mind. No sooner do I try to delve into it than I pop out on the other side. It’s as shallow as a midget’s footbath.
For instance, I understand why liberals opposed invading Iraq. It was because George W. Bush instigated it. They voiced no objections when Bill Clinton took us into Somalia and Kosovo, and now that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, you don’t hear them whining that it’s a quagmire, that the Afghanis had nothing to do with 9/11 or demanding that Obama spell out his exit strategy and specify the date of withdrawal. But, given all that, I would have thought that at least the tree-huggers would have campaigned for regime change in Iraq, based not on Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds and his history of torture and rape, God forbid, but for having set fire to the oil fields of Kuwait in 1991, probably the worst man-made ecological disaster in history.
It is beginning to look as if the various fascists, racists and astroturfers who have been showing up at town halls may have stopped Obama from taking his next step in destroying America. But Obama and his cronies are like those creatures in scary movies; just when you think they’re dead and buried, they reach a hand up from the grave and grab someone’s ankle.
Somebody summed up Obamacare very neatly. In an e-mail that was forwarded to me, it said: “Let me get this straight. We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head said he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempts them from abiding by it, signed by a President who smokes and is also exempted, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?”
Of course we keep hearing the left-wing lunkheads tell us how glorious single payer health care is, pointing to Canada and England as sterling examples of medical Nirvana. Yet the BBC reported that there is a five month wait to have surgery for a slipped disc or to have a hernia repaired, eight months for cataract surgery, 11 months for a hip replacement and an entire year if you need to have your knee worked on. So I guess the best thing an Englishman can do is claim he needs to have surgery for a hernia and when, after five months, they wheel him into the operating room, break the news that it’s really his damn knee that’s been acting up.
One thing that’s been made clear is that whether it’s last year’s amnesty bill or this Frankensteinian health care monstrosity, the people still retain some clout when they stand up and start acting like Americans and not like a herd of sheep waiting to be shorn by the likes of Henry Waxman, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi. As someone once observed, in order to make politicians see the light, they first need to feel the heat. Or as Ronald Reagan put it so eloquently: “Government isn’t the solution. Government is the problem.”
If there’s one thing you have to say about liberal politicians, it’s that they regard consistency pretty much the way they regard their constituents; namely with arrogant contempt. It’s liberals, after all, who are constantly telling us that women have absolute autonomy over their own bodies, so long as the topic under discussion happens to be abortions. But when it comes to everything else, they are quite content to leave all medical decisions in the hands of the federal government, up to and including the rationing of health care to babies and the elderly. Gee, and we all thought the Nazis were bad!
Because I live in California, I occasionally am lucky enough to receive an e-mail from Barbara Boxer. The other day, she let me know that she’s hard at work on a Bill of Rights for Passengers. The rest of us are concerned about Iran and North Korea building a nuclear bomb and about Obama sovietizing the United States, but Boxer is worried about disgruntled airline passengers.
I sent her ladyship the following message: “President Obama is trying to morph America into a socialist tyranny, complete with commissars and armed thugs, and you’re worrying about airliners sitting on the tarmac? Most Americans do not support the pork-stuffed stimulus bill, cap & trade, the pandering to the UAW and the CEIU, the financing of ACORN or the abomination known as Obamacare, and you’re busy pushing legislation so that airline passengers won’t occasionally suffer some minor discomfort? Just for the record, we’d all gladly just settle for a little more legroom. Are you trying to give new meaning to “inconsequential,” ma’am?”
Finally, lest someone gets the idea that I only pick on liberals, I have a bone to pick with Sean Hannity. I recently heard him give absolution to Michael Vick. He was ready to forgive Vick his trespasses because, after all, Vick had served 18 months in jail and he had apologized. The problem is, one, Vick should have been sentenced to at least 10 years; two, inasmuch as Hannity wasn’t one of Vick’s victims, he’s not entitled to accept his apology; and, three, the time for remorse and possibly redemption, it seems to me, is before you’re arrested. After that, it’s only defense strategy -- whether what’s at stake is a more severe sentence or trying to salvage a multi-million dollar NFL career.
This is a guy, after all, who beat, drowned, hanged and electrocuted dogs for no other reason than that they lost fights to other dogs, and because, sadist that he is, he could. Imagine if quarterbacks who lost games were treated like that.
All I can say is, defensive linemen of the NFL -- have at him!
Sometimes, I must confess, I find myself feeling like one of those cursed individuals like Job and Sisyphus. In my case, the curse takes the form of trying to be rational in a mad world. My particular albatross is trying to make sense of the liberal mind. No sooner do I try to delve into it than I pop out on the other side. It’s as shallow as a midget’s footbath.
For instance, I understand why liberals opposed invading Iraq. It was because George W. Bush instigated it. They voiced no objections when Bill Clinton took us into Somalia and Kosovo, and now that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, you don’t hear them whining that it’s a quagmire, that the Afghanis had nothing to do with 9/11 or demanding that Obama spell out his exit strategy and specify the date of withdrawal. But, given all that, I would have thought that at least the tree-huggers would have campaigned for regime change in Iraq, based not on Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds and his history of torture and rape, God forbid, but for having set fire to the oil fields of Kuwait in 1991, probably the worst man-made ecological disaster in history.
It is beginning to look as if the various fascists, racists and astroturfers who have been showing up at town halls may have stopped Obama from taking his next step in destroying America. But Obama and his cronies are like those creatures in scary movies; just when you think they’re dead and buried, they reach a hand up from the grave and grab someone’s ankle.
Somebody summed up Obamacare very neatly. In an e-mail that was forwarded to me, it said: “Let me get this straight. We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head said he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempts them from abiding by it, signed by a President who smokes and is also exempted, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?”
Of course we keep hearing the left-wing lunkheads tell us how glorious single payer health care is, pointing to Canada and England as sterling examples of medical Nirvana. Yet the BBC reported that there is a five month wait to have surgery for a slipped disc or to have a hernia repaired, eight months for cataract surgery, 11 months for a hip replacement and an entire year if you need to have your knee worked on. So I guess the best thing an Englishman can do is claim he needs to have surgery for a hernia and when, after five months, they wheel him into the operating room, break the news that it’s really his damn knee that’s been acting up.
One thing that’s been made clear is that whether it’s last year’s amnesty bill or this Frankensteinian health care monstrosity, the people still retain some clout when they stand up and start acting like Americans and not like a herd of sheep waiting to be shorn by the likes of Henry Waxman, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi. As someone once observed, in order to make politicians see the light, they first need to feel the heat. Or as Ronald Reagan put it so eloquently: “Government isn’t the solution. Government is the problem.”
If there’s one thing you have to say about liberal politicians, it’s that they regard consistency pretty much the way they regard their constituents; namely with arrogant contempt. It’s liberals, after all, who are constantly telling us that women have absolute autonomy over their own bodies, so long as the topic under discussion happens to be abortions. But when it comes to everything else, they are quite content to leave all medical decisions in the hands of the federal government, up to and including the rationing of health care to babies and the elderly. Gee, and we all thought the Nazis were bad!
Because I live in California, I occasionally am lucky enough to receive an e-mail from Barbara Boxer. The other day, she let me know that she’s hard at work on a Bill of Rights for Passengers. The rest of us are concerned about Iran and North Korea building a nuclear bomb and about Obama sovietizing the United States, but Boxer is worried about disgruntled airline passengers.
I sent her ladyship the following message: “President Obama is trying to morph America into a socialist tyranny, complete with commissars and armed thugs, and you’re worrying about airliners sitting on the tarmac? Most Americans do not support the pork-stuffed stimulus bill, cap & trade, the pandering to the UAW and the CEIU, the financing of ACORN or the abomination known as Obamacare, and you’re busy pushing legislation so that airline passengers won’t occasionally suffer some minor discomfort? Just for the record, we’d all gladly just settle for a little more legroom. Are you trying to give new meaning to “inconsequential,” ma’am?”
Finally, lest someone gets the idea that I only pick on liberals, I have a bone to pick with Sean Hannity. I recently heard him give absolution to Michael Vick. He was ready to forgive Vick his trespasses because, after all, Vick had served 18 months in jail and he had apologized. The problem is, one, Vick should have been sentenced to at least 10 years; two, inasmuch as Hannity wasn’t one of Vick’s victims, he’s not entitled to accept his apology; and, three, the time for remorse and possibly redemption, it seems to me, is before you’re arrested. After that, it’s only defense strategy -- whether what’s at stake is a more severe sentence or trying to salvage a multi-million dollar NFL career.
This is a guy, after all, who beat, drowned, hanged and electrocuted dogs for no other reason than that they lost fights to other dogs, and because, sadist that he is, he could. Imagine if quarterbacks who lost games were treated like that.
All I can say is, defensive linemen of the NFL -- have at him!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Clunkers Everywhere I Look
by Burt Prelutsky
Unlike most conservatives, when I first heard about cash for clunkers, I got very excited. But then I found out that it involved people turning in their used cars. I had jumped to the conclusion that we were all going to get money if we delivered politicians to some collection center. Just imagine getting $4,500 for dropping off, say, Henry Waxman at a junkyard where, together with fellow California jalopies like Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, they could be crushed and shipped off to China. You would have to agree that would be a pretty good deal even if no money changed hands.
One of my liberal readers sent me an e-mail stating that the health care system in America is in terrible shape and needs a huge overhaul, which is why he was supporting Obama’s plan. I wrote back to say that I agreed that the system needed fine-tuning, but, like Charles Krauthammer, I felt that the work consisted mainly of separating health insurance from employment and bringing about radical tort reform so that doctors didn’t have to spend more time worrying about being sued than they did about the health of their patients. I went on to add that if I was wrong, things could always be changed, but if he and Obama were wrong, a huge federal bureaucracy would be created and you can’t kill one of those even with a silver bullet or a wooden stake through its heart.
Speaking of money, I read recently that a child born in 2008 will cost his or her parents just under $300,000 to raise to the age of 18. As if that’s not bad enough, it will then take another $100,000 or so to get him or her through college; at which point, after four years of indoctrination by tenured pinheads, they’ll come to regard their meal tickets as bourgeois ignoramuses. My advice to prospective parents is to get a dog. You’ll get unconditional love, they’ll never insist on borrowing your car and, best of all, they will never bite the hand that feeds them.
Usually when people suggest that a picture is worth a thousand words, I, who specialize in doling out wisdom a thousand or so words at a time, take it personally. However, even I thought the now famous photo taken at the beer summit was worth several thousand words. While Cambridge police officer Crowley assisted the physically handicapped Henry Gates down the White House steps, Barack Obama blithely ignored him, far more concerned with having his picture taken than with helping his old friend.
Speaking of Obama, every time I see him, the theme song from “The Jeffersons” starts playing in my head: “We’re movin’ on up to the east side. To a deluxe apartment in the sky…We finally got a piece of the pie.” There’s no insult intended. Not to George Jefferson, at any rate. He worked very hard, opening and operating a chain of dry cleaning stores. He wasn’t a community organizer, which, in case you weren’t aware of it, is code for a left-wing activist. Obama was up to his ears in dirty Chicago politics; Jefferson, on the other hand, was dedicated to cleaning dirty laundry.
Because I had recently acknowledged that I had grown disenchanted with Bill O’Reilly, a reader asked me who my media favorites are. There are several I enjoy, including Charles Krauthammer, Walter Williams, Ann Coulter, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Laura Ingraham and Lee Rodgers. A couple of others that I admire are Glenn Beck and Michael Savage. Both convey a great deal of passion, and I find Beck very funny.
Frankly, I don’t know why the fact that Savage has been denied entry to England hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Like the member of the Dutch parliament, Geert Wilders, the reason for his exclusion is the direct result of Islamic pressure groups. Savage’s daily radio show, one of the highest-rated in America, isn’t even broadcast in England. But that didn’t prevent Home Secretary Jacqui Smith from putting him on the same list of undesirables as known terrorists and murderers. Smith declared in her announcement: “We want to ensure that the names disclosed reflect the broad range of cases and are not all Islamic extremists.” So, in a clumsy attempt to be even-handed, the loony Brits suggested that a Jewish talk show host was as dangerous as Muslim terrorists, neo-Nazis and a Russian serial killer.
But I probably shouldn’t be throwing stones at the English, considering that Obama and his commissars are labeling Americans who just happen to oppose Cap & Trade, billions for clunkers and to the havoc the leftists are trying to wreak on our health care system, as brainless sheep. Large groups of citizens rise up to voice their grievances and he calls them mobs, claims that grass roots are really made of Astroturf and tells his minions to ape the Soviets and rat out their friends and neighbors. Some people I know refer to what Obama is doing as social engineering. I think it’s something even worse: socialist engineering.
I wonder if anyone else has noticed that whenever a black conservative voices an opinion, the liberal claque insists that he’s not an authentic black, and when a white conservative voices an opinion, Obama’s sycophants insist he’s not an authentic American.
When Obama was running for the presidency, a few of us Paul Revere wannabes were warning you: “The reds are coming! The reds are coming!”
Naturally, Obama, a born and bred race hustler who learned his lessons well from Jeremiah Wright, wanted you to believe that the only reason people could possibly have for opposing him was his race. But it was never about the color of his skin. It was always about the color of his politics.
Unlike most conservatives, when I first heard about cash for clunkers, I got very excited. But then I found out that it involved people turning in their used cars. I had jumped to the conclusion that we were all going to get money if we delivered politicians to some collection center. Just imagine getting $4,500 for dropping off, say, Henry Waxman at a junkyard where, together with fellow California jalopies like Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, they could be crushed and shipped off to China. You would have to agree that would be a pretty good deal even if no money changed hands.
One of my liberal readers sent me an e-mail stating that the health care system in America is in terrible shape and needs a huge overhaul, which is why he was supporting Obama’s plan. I wrote back to say that I agreed that the system needed fine-tuning, but, like Charles Krauthammer, I felt that the work consisted mainly of separating health insurance from employment and bringing about radical tort reform so that doctors didn’t have to spend more time worrying about being sued than they did about the health of their patients. I went on to add that if I was wrong, things could always be changed, but if he and Obama were wrong, a huge federal bureaucracy would be created and you can’t kill one of those even with a silver bullet or a wooden stake through its heart.
Speaking of money, I read recently that a child born in 2008 will cost his or her parents just under $300,000 to raise to the age of 18. As if that’s not bad enough, it will then take another $100,000 or so to get him or her through college; at which point, after four years of indoctrination by tenured pinheads, they’ll come to regard their meal tickets as bourgeois ignoramuses. My advice to prospective parents is to get a dog. You’ll get unconditional love, they’ll never insist on borrowing your car and, best of all, they will never bite the hand that feeds them.
Usually when people suggest that a picture is worth a thousand words, I, who specialize in doling out wisdom a thousand or so words at a time, take it personally. However, even I thought the now famous photo taken at the beer summit was worth several thousand words. While Cambridge police officer Crowley assisted the physically handicapped Henry Gates down the White House steps, Barack Obama blithely ignored him, far more concerned with having his picture taken than with helping his old friend.
Speaking of Obama, every time I see him, the theme song from “The Jeffersons” starts playing in my head: “We’re movin’ on up to the east side. To a deluxe apartment in the sky…We finally got a piece of the pie.” There’s no insult intended. Not to George Jefferson, at any rate. He worked very hard, opening and operating a chain of dry cleaning stores. He wasn’t a community organizer, which, in case you weren’t aware of it, is code for a left-wing activist. Obama was up to his ears in dirty Chicago politics; Jefferson, on the other hand, was dedicated to cleaning dirty laundry.
Because I had recently acknowledged that I had grown disenchanted with Bill O’Reilly, a reader asked me who my media favorites are. There are several I enjoy, including Charles Krauthammer, Walter Williams, Ann Coulter, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Laura Ingraham and Lee Rodgers. A couple of others that I admire are Glenn Beck and Michael Savage. Both convey a great deal of passion, and I find Beck very funny.
Frankly, I don’t know why the fact that Savage has been denied entry to England hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Like the member of the Dutch parliament, Geert Wilders, the reason for his exclusion is the direct result of Islamic pressure groups. Savage’s daily radio show, one of the highest-rated in America, isn’t even broadcast in England. But that didn’t prevent Home Secretary Jacqui Smith from putting him on the same list of undesirables as known terrorists and murderers. Smith declared in her announcement: “We want to ensure that the names disclosed reflect the broad range of cases and are not all Islamic extremists.” So, in a clumsy attempt to be even-handed, the loony Brits suggested that a Jewish talk show host was as dangerous as Muslim terrorists, neo-Nazis and a Russian serial killer.
But I probably shouldn’t be throwing stones at the English, considering that Obama and his commissars are labeling Americans who just happen to oppose Cap & Trade, billions for clunkers and to the havoc the leftists are trying to wreak on our health care system, as brainless sheep. Large groups of citizens rise up to voice their grievances and he calls them mobs, claims that grass roots are really made of Astroturf and tells his minions to ape the Soviets and rat out their friends and neighbors. Some people I know refer to what Obama is doing as social engineering. I think it’s something even worse: socialist engineering.
I wonder if anyone else has noticed that whenever a black conservative voices an opinion, the liberal claque insists that he’s not an authentic black, and when a white conservative voices an opinion, Obama’s sycophants insist he’s not an authentic American.
When Obama was running for the presidency, a few of us Paul Revere wannabes were warning you: “The reds are coming! The reds are coming!”
Naturally, Obama, a born and bred race hustler who learned his lessons well from Jeremiah Wright, wanted you to believe that the only reason people could possibly have for opposing him was his race. But it was never about the color of his skin. It was always about the color of his politics.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Larry Gelbart: An Appreciation
by Burt Prelutsky
It was a little over 30 years ago that I first laid eyes on the remarkable Larry Gelbart. The occasion was our high school’s 50th anniversary. I had been selected to host the celebration in the auditorium. It was also my duty to talk about what Fairfax High had been like when I was there during the 1950s. It was Larry’s job to report on the 1940s. As I recall, producer Mike Frankovich handled the 30s and singer Martha Tilton recalled the 1920s. Although I got to introduce Gelbart to the audience, we didn’t actually meet.
Several months later, in a weekly column I was then writing for the L.A. Times, I took exception to the constant trashing of TV. For all its obvious faults, I pointed out that over the years TV, not Broadway, books or the movies, was the place to find the best comedy in America. I went on to mention ten or twelve of the anonymous men most responsible for writing the funniest lines. Naturally, Larry Gelbart was one of the names on my list.
The next day, I got a phone call. It was Larry and he started out by apologizing. He said that he and his wife, Pat, had dreaded going to the Fairfax High bash, but that I had been very funny and they had had a terrific time. It seems he had meant to call me the very next day, but it had slipped his mind. Now he was calling to thank me for mentioning him in my article.
Oddly enough, I was anxious to get off the phone. Although I appreciate compliments as much as the next guy, I’m the guy who prefers them in writing. Even when I receive them over the phone, I feel like I’m blushing and have lost the power of speech. After being praised, just saying “Thank you” seems terribly lame, while trying to return the compliment seems awfully phony. But just before I was able to mumble my thanks and hang up, I heard him say, “I understand you sometimes write for TV. If you ever come up with an idea for a ‘MASH’ script, just shoot it over to me. I’m here at 20th.”
It had long been my wish to write comedy for TV, but I had not been able to break through, only managing to accumulate credits on “Dragnet” and “McMillan & Wife.” So, while I was greatly motivated, my problem was that I wasn’t a fan of “MASH.” I hadn’t liked the movie and the one time I had watched an episode, it just seemed like all those other lousy service comedies, like “Don’t Go Near the Water” and “Operation Petticoat,” that I had already come to loathe.
But, at the time nobody else was inviting me to write a comedy or anything else, so I sat down with my steno pad and prayed for a miracle. The miracle came in the form of an idea about an injured soldier showing up at the 4077th, claiming to be Jesus Christ.
“Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?” led to seven additional MASH scripts, a shot at several other sit coms and ultimately swung open the doors to writing TV movies.
Because I owed Gelbart a debt that I could never hope to re-pay, I was grateful when he called one day and asked for a favor. It seems the WGA was hosting a tribute to Larry that very evening and Mel Shavelson, who was scheduled to emcee the event, had taken ill. Larry wondered if I would agree to fill in.
Inasmuch as my responsibilities would be pretty much limited to pointing to people in the audience during the Q&A session, and in some cases repeating their questions into a microphone, I felt I was up to it, if just barely.
Larry was his usual droll and hilarious self. The most memorable moment, though, came during the intermission when Larry and I left the stage to sit with Pat in the front row. A young fellow came down the aisle and kneeled next to Larry. As expected, he began by saying what a great fan he was, and how, being a writer himself, he regarded Gelbart as a role model. Larry, far more adept at handling compliments than I because no doubt he had had so much more experience, was smiling and nodding graciously. The big surprise came when the young fan concluded his remarks by saying, “And that’s why I’m so excited to be re-writing ‘Rough Cut’.”
“Rough Cut,” you see, was a script Gelbart had been writing for Burt Reynolds and David Niven. Until that moment, he didn’t know that he’d been replaced by the producer.
So, forget all the stuff he wrote for the movies (“Tootsie,” “Oh, God!” “The Wrong Box”); the stage (“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Mastergate,” “City of Angels”); and TV (“MASH,” “Your Show of Shows,” “Caesar’s Hour,” “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” “Barbarians at the Gate,”). Forget that at the age of 16, while still attending Fairfax High, he would go, still wearing his ROTC uniform, to write for “Duffy’s Tavern” and, later, Bob Hope on the radio. After all, anyone with the appropriate amount of God-given talent, wit and staying power, could do the very same thing for 65 years.
But the fact that he could listen to this pisher break the news to him that he had replaced him on a writing project and keep on smiling, shake his hand and wish him luck, tells you all you need to know about what sort of mensch Larry Gelbart was. [photo by Sasha Gelbart.]
It was a little over 30 years ago that I first laid eyes on the remarkable Larry Gelbart. The occasion was our high school’s 50th anniversary. I had been selected to host the celebration in the auditorium. It was also my duty to talk about what Fairfax High had been like when I was there during the 1950s. It was Larry’s job to report on the 1940s. As I recall, producer Mike Frankovich handled the 30s and singer Martha Tilton recalled the 1920s. Although I got to introduce Gelbart to the audience, we didn’t actually meet.
Several months later, in a weekly column I was then writing for the L.A. Times, I took exception to the constant trashing of TV. For all its obvious faults, I pointed out that over the years TV, not Broadway, books or the movies, was the place to find the best comedy in America. I went on to mention ten or twelve of the anonymous men most responsible for writing the funniest lines. Naturally, Larry Gelbart was one of the names on my list.The next day, I got a phone call. It was Larry and he started out by apologizing. He said that he and his wife, Pat, had dreaded going to the Fairfax High bash, but that I had been very funny and they had had a terrific time. It seems he had meant to call me the very next day, but it had slipped his mind. Now he was calling to thank me for mentioning him in my article.
Oddly enough, I was anxious to get off the phone. Although I appreciate compliments as much as the next guy, I’m the guy who prefers them in writing. Even when I receive them over the phone, I feel like I’m blushing and have lost the power of speech. After being praised, just saying “Thank you” seems terribly lame, while trying to return the compliment seems awfully phony. But just before I was able to mumble my thanks and hang up, I heard him say, “I understand you sometimes write for TV. If you ever come up with an idea for a ‘MASH’ script, just shoot it over to me. I’m here at 20th.”
It had long been my wish to write comedy for TV, but I had not been able to break through, only managing to accumulate credits on “Dragnet” and “McMillan & Wife.” So, while I was greatly motivated, my problem was that I wasn’t a fan of “MASH.” I hadn’t liked the movie and the one time I had watched an episode, it just seemed like all those other lousy service comedies, like “Don’t Go Near the Water” and “Operation Petticoat,” that I had already come to loathe.
But, at the time nobody else was inviting me to write a comedy or anything else, so I sat down with my steno pad and prayed for a miracle. The miracle came in the form of an idea about an injured soldier showing up at the 4077th, claiming to be Jesus Christ.
“Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?” led to seven additional MASH scripts, a shot at several other sit coms and ultimately swung open the doors to writing TV movies.
Because I owed Gelbart a debt that I could never hope to re-pay, I was grateful when he called one day and asked for a favor. It seems the WGA was hosting a tribute to Larry that very evening and Mel Shavelson, who was scheduled to emcee the event, had taken ill. Larry wondered if I would agree to fill in.
Inasmuch as my responsibilities would be pretty much limited to pointing to people in the audience during the Q&A session, and in some cases repeating their questions into a microphone, I felt I was up to it, if just barely.
Larry was his usual droll and hilarious self. The most memorable moment, though, came during the intermission when Larry and I left the stage to sit with Pat in the front row. A young fellow came down the aisle and kneeled next to Larry. As expected, he began by saying what a great fan he was, and how, being a writer himself, he regarded Gelbart as a role model. Larry, far more adept at handling compliments than I because no doubt he had had so much more experience, was smiling and nodding graciously. The big surprise came when the young fan concluded his remarks by saying, “And that’s why I’m so excited to be re-writing ‘Rough Cut’.”
“Rough Cut,” you see, was a script Gelbart had been writing for Burt Reynolds and David Niven. Until that moment, he didn’t know that he’d been replaced by the producer.
So, forget all the stuff he wrote for the movies (“Tootsie,” “Oh, God!” “The Wrong Box”); the stage (“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Mastergate,” “City of Angels”); and TV (“MASH,” “Your Show of Shows,” “Caesar’s Hour,” “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” “Barbarians at the Gate,”). Forget that at the age of 16, while still attending Fairfax High, he would go, still wearing his ROTC uniform, to write for “Duffy’s Tavern” and, later, Bob Hope on the radio. After all, anyone with the appropriate amount of God-given talent, wit and staying power, could do the very same thing for 65 years.
But the fact that he could listen to this pisher break the news to him that he had replaced him on a writing project and keep on smiling, shake his hand and wish him luck, tells you all you need to know about what sort of mensch Larry Gelbart was. [photo by Sasha Gelbart.]
Friday, September 11, 2009
Liberalism Is A Cult
by Burt Prelutsky
For the longest time, I’ve insisted that liberalism is the religion of choice for atheists, agnostics and run-of-the-mill secularists. After all, be they Christians, Jews, Moslems or Buddhists, the truly devout accept the tenets of their religion on faith. They can try to have logical debates with the likes of a Christopher Hitchens, but in the end it all comes down to a couple of people getting red in the face, hollering “Is so” and “Is not” at each other.
But, of late, I’ve decided that referring to liberalism as a religion for non-believers is showing it too much respect. It far more resembles a cult. Even the expression about leftists drinking the Kool-Aid refers to an actual cult, the one created by the certifiable loony, Jim Jones. Having led his flock of deranged sheep from San Francisco to Guyana, one day in 1978, he ordered more than 900 of his followers to drink Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.
It would be easy enough to dismiss Jones as just another cuckoo, except that he was a man well-connected in left-wing circles. Mayor George Moscone had appointed him Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority. He was on a first name basis with Walter Mondale and Rosalynn Carter. Governor Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally and Assemblyman Willie Brown, all attended a testimonial dinner honoring Jim Jones in 1976. What makes that date all the more remarkable isn’t just that it was a scant two years before Jones conducted the mass suicide, but three years after a series of critical newspaper articles had appeared and after eight members of the cult had defected and warned the world that he was a full-fledged menace.
It was in 1973, after the articles began appearing, that Jones started looking for an escape route. The options he considered included Canada, Trinidad and the socialist nation of Guyana. He favored the last-named because he approved of its left-wing government, having preached that “those who remain drugged with the opiate of religion have to be brought to enlightenment -- socialism.” But a contributing factor in making him settle on Guyana was that it lacked an extradition treaty with the United States.
He referred to his creed as apostolic socialism and called his settlement the People’s Temple Agricultural Project. It’s always a good idea to give anything that puts “People’s” in its title a wide berth, be it a cult in South America or a country, such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria or the People’s Republic of China.
Just like the disciples of Jim Jones, liberals, too, will swallow any swill. They will believe, for example, that Al Gore is a science maven. They will parrot his absurd prognostications even when he goes from yakking incessantly about “global warming” to “climate change” without missing a beat, even though changing from one to the other is tantamount to warning people of a locust invasion one second and sounding the alert about an incoming comet the next.
But no self-respecting liberal would ever think to ask the man if by climate change, he meant that we were now facing the danger of global-cooling, and that we had better watch out for expanding icebergs and those marauding gangs of polar bears. Liberals don’t think twice about comparing George W. Bush to Hitler and Sarah Palin to a cheap slut, but they would never think of embarrassing one of their own with an honest question. One can easily picture Al Gore, whose cash register hasn’t stopped ka-chinging for even five seconds since he lost the 2000 election, saying in that self-reverential tone of his: “Are you going to believe me or that icicle hanging from your nose?”
Another thing about which all liberals agree is that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Recently, I even heard Bill O’Reilly insist that Obama’s birth certificate is a non-issue and that nobody really cares about it. By this time, I have come to regard the Number One Name in Cable News as a big blowhard, so his observation, needless to say, did nothing to change my opinion. But the truth is, a lot of people care about the birth certificate and Obama’s passport and what nationality he claimed to be on his college application. I know they do because they keep writing to me about these things. For my part, I hope Obama is an American citizen. I wouldn’t want to witness the inevitable riots in the streets of this nation if there were a move to depose him. I would much prefer to see Blue Dog Democrats join with Republicans to stop Cap & Trade and Obamacare in their tracks, and then have conservatives elected in record numbers in 2010. Nothing I’d enjoy more than seeing Obama turned into a lame duck for the last two years of his term, and see people like Harry Reid, Arlen Specter, Chris Dodd and Henry Waxman, turned into private citizens. And the more private, the better.
The hypocrisy of liberals is apparent in the fact that not a single one has expressed any concern over Obama’s refusal to offer up any of those documents or expressed the slightest alarm over the Constitution’s being treated like so much toilet paper. On the other hand, imagine how the NY Times and all its hand maidens in the MSM would be carrying on if, instead of being a left-wing ideologue, The Man Without a Country were a Republican!
Another thing about which all liberals agree is that America is a racist nation. Up to a point, I happen to agree with them. But, unlike Henry Gates and the Obamas, I think it’s black America that’s racist.
That’s the dirty little secret that nobody is supposed to mention. White Americans are so terrified of being labeled bigots that even most conservatives are loath to speak honestly about something that the majority of us believe.
Blacks have been riding the gravy train of racist politics for years now. For the sin of slavery, which ended over 140 years ago, long before the invention of the electric light, the automobile or even the basketball, they’ve received trillions of dollars in the form of welfare checks, small business loans, affirmative action, Operation Headstart and food stamps. In return, the community, as they like to call it, has given back to America a record number of illegitimate children, violent crime totally disproportionate to their numbers, an academic dropout rate that guarantees the cycle of ignorance and violence will continue unabated, and a constant clamor for more and more in the way of city, state and federal hand-outs.
If blacks aren’t demanding reparations for the evil done to their great-great-great-great-grandparents, they’re demanding that our presidents constantly apologize for past mistakes. The fact that we now have a black president and that two of the last three secretaries of state were black doesn’t count for anything. They’re like those bratty little children we’ve all encountered in supermarkets who demand every piece of candy in the place and won’t stop screaming until they get it.
The blacks scream about racism, but they’re the ones who have a Black Congressional Caucus that excludes even those white congressmen who represent predominantly black districts.
It’s not just white people and white cops they despise, but any black person who doesn’t have one hand out demanding a payoff and the other hand holding a club, comes in for their collective outrage. They will celebrate when O.J. Simpson gets off for butchering two white people and go into collective mourning when a freak like Michael Jackson dies of a drug overdose, but people like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, Bill Cosby and Ward Connerly, are dismissed as oreos and denigrated as not being authentic blacks.
It seems that if you’re not a race hustler like Al Sharpton, Kweisi Mfume, Charles Rangel, Denny Davis, John Conyers, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Henry Coates, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan or Henry Gates, out there getting rich by promoting black victimhood, you’re an Uncle Tom.
For what these so-called leaders are doing to the black psyche, to ensuring that future generations of American blacks continue to grow up with a chip on their shoulder and nothing but a sense of perpetual grievance in their heart, these people should rot in hell.
I can hear a chorus of people saying, “But surely you’re not talking about all blacks.” Well, of course not. Unlike blacks, I would never generalize about an entire group of people that way. However, when 90% of black Americans trooped out and voted for Sen. Obama when he was running against a person with the liberal credentials of Sen. Clinton for no other reason than Obama’s race, it’s safe to assume I’m talking about 90% of them.
When you get right down to it, the worst thing about cults is that, unlike the Jonestowners, they so rarely drink the right blend of Kool-Aid.
For the longest time, I’ve insisted that liberalism is the religion of choice for atheists, agnostics and run-of-the-mill secularists. After all, be they Christians, Jews, Moslems or Buddhists, the truly devout accept the tenets of their religion on faith. They can try to have logical debates with the likes of a Christopher Hitchens, but in the end it all comes down to a couple of people getting red in the face, hollering “Is so” and “Is not” at each other.
But, of late, I’ve decided that referring to liberalism as a religion for non-believers is showing it too much respect. It far more resembles a cult. Even the expression about leftists drinking the Kool-Aid refers to an actual cult, the one created by the certifiable loony, Jim Jones. Having led his flock of deranged sheep from San Francisco to Guyana, one day in 1978, he ordered more than 900 of his followers to drink Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.
It would be easy enough to dismiss Jones as just another cuckoo, except that he was a man well-connected in left-wing circles. Mayor George Moscone had appointed him Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority. He was on a first name basis with Walter Mondale and Rosalynn Carter. Governor Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally and Assemblyman Willie Brown, all attended a testimonial dinner honoring Jim Jones in 1976. What makes that date all the more remarkable isn’t just that it was a scant two years before Jones conducted the mass suicide, but three years after a series of critical newspaper articles had appeared and after eight members of the cult had defected and warned the world that he was a full-fledged menace.
It was in 1973, after the articles began appearing, that Jones started looking for an escape route. The options he considered included Canada, Trinidad and the socialist nation of Guyana. He favored the last-named because he approved of its left-wing government, having preached that “those who remain drugged with the opiate of religion have to be brought to enlightenment -- socialism.” But a contributing factor in making him settle on Guyana was that it lacked an extradition treaty with the United States.
He referred to his creed as apostolic socialism and called his settlement the People’s Temple Agricultural Project. It’s always a good idea to give anything that puts “People’s” in its title a wide berth, be it a cult in South America or a country, such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria or the People’s Republic of China.
Just like the disciples of Jim Jones, liberals, too, will swallow any swill. They will believe, for example, that Al Gore is a science maven. They will parrot his absurd prognostications even when he goes from yakking incessantly about “global warming” to “climate change” without missing a beat, even though changing from one to the other is tantamount to warning people of a locust invasion one second and sounding the alert about an incoming comet the next.
But no self-respecting liberal would ever think to ask the man if by climate change, he meant that we were now facing the danger of global-cooling, and that we had better watch out for expanding icebergs and those marauding gangs of polar bears. Liberals don’t think twice about comparing George W. Bush to Hitler and Sarah Palin to a cheap slut, but they would never think of embarrassing one of their own with an honest question. One can easily picture Al Gore, whose cash register hasn’t stopped ka-chinging for even five seconds since he lost the 2000 election, saying in that self-reverential tone of his: “Are you going to believe me or that icicle hanging from your nose?”
Another thing about which all liberals agree is that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Recently, I even heard Bill O’Reilly insist that Obama’s birth certificate is a non-issue and that nobody really cares about it. By this time, I have come to regard the Number One Name in Cable News as a big blowhard, so his observation, needless to say, did nothing to change my opinion. But the truth is, a lot of people care about the birth certificate and Obama’s passport and what nationality he claimed to be on his college application. I know they do because they keep writing to me about these things. For my part, I hope Obama is an American citizen. I wouldn’t want to witness the inevitable riots in the streets of this nation if there were a move to depose him. I would much prefer to see Blue Dog Democrats join with Republicans to stop Cap & Trade and Obamacare in their tracks, and then have conservatives elected in record numbers in 2010. Nothing I’d enjoy more than seeing Obama turned into a lame duck for the last two years of his term, and see people like Harry Reid, Arlen Specter, Chris Dodd and Henry Waxman, turned into private citizens. And the more private, the better.
The hypocrisy of liberals is apparent in the fact that not a single one has expressed any concern over Obama’s refusal to offer up any of those documents or expressed the slightest alarm over the Constitution’s being treated like so much toilet paper. On the other hand, imagine how the NY Times and all its hand maidens in the MSM would be carrying on if, instead of being a left-wing ideologue, The Man Without a Country were a Republican!
Another thing about which all liberals agree is that America is a racist nation. Up to a point, I happen to agree with them. But, unlike Henry Gates and the Obamas, I think it’s black America that’s racist.
That’s the dirty little secret that nobody is supposed to mention. White Americans are so terrified of being labeled bigots that even most conservatives are loath to speak honestly about something that the majority of us believe.
Blacks have been riding the gravy train of racist politics for years now. For the sin of slavery, which ended over 140 years ago, long before the invention of the electric light, the automobile or even the basketball, they’ve received trillions of dollars in the form of welfare checks, small business loans, affirmative action, Operation Headstart and food stamps. In return, the community, as they like to call it, has given back to America a record number of illegitimate children, violent crime totally disproportionate to their numbers, an academic dropout rate that guarantees the cycle of ignorance and violence will continue unabated, and a constant clamor for more and more in the way of city, state and federal hand-outs.
If blacks aren’t demanding reparations for the evil done to their great-great-great-great-grandparents, they’re demanding that our presidents constantly apologize for past mistakes. The fact that we now have a black president and that two of the last three secretaries of state were black doesn’t count for anything. They’re like those bratty little children we’ve all encountered in supermarkets who demand every piece of candy in the place and won’t stop screaming until they get it.
The blacks scream about racism, but they’re the ones who have a Black Congressional Caucus that excludes even those white congressmen who represent predominantly black districts.
It’s not just white people and white cops they despise, but any black person who doesn’t have one hand out demanding a payoff and the other hand holding a club, comes in for their collective outrage. They will celebrate when O.J. Simpson gets off for butchering two white people and go into collective mourning when a freak like Michael Jackson dies of a drug overdose, but people like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, Bill Cosby and Ward Connerly, are dismissed as oreos and denigrated as not being authentic blacks.
It seems that if you’re not a race hustler like Al Sharpton, Kweisi Mfume, Charles Rangel, Denny Davis, John Conyers, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Henry Coates, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan or Henry Gates, out there getting rich by promoting black victimhood, you’re an Uncle Tom.
For what these so-called leaders are doing to the black psyche, to ensuring that future generations of American blacks continue to grow up with a chip on their shoulder and nothing but a sense of perpetual grievance in their heart, these people should rot in hell.
I can hear a chorus of people saying, “But surely you’re not talking about all blacks.” Well, of course not. Unlike blacks, I would never generalize about an entire group of people that way. However, when 90% of black Americans trooped out and voted for Sen. Obama when he was running against a person with the liberal credentials of Sen. Clinton for no other reason than Obama’s race, it’s safe to assume I’m talking about 90% of them.
When you get right down to it, the worst thing about cults is that, unlike the Jonestowners, they so rarely drink the right blend of Kool-Aid.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Obama's Health Scare Program
by Burt Prelutsky
If I had to explain Americans to a Martian, I would be hard-pressed. It would be especially difficult when it came to liberals. But, there are even conservatives who confound me. For instance, why would any Republican belong to AARP? They might just as well skip the middleman and send their money directly to Howard Dean and the DNC.
Judging by the organization’s enthusiastic support of ObamaCare, which should really be called ObamaDoesn’tcare, it’s obvious that the only old people AARP gives a hoot about are Robert Byrd, Arlen Specter, Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid.
Speaking of senators, I have on occasion tried to send e-mails on important issues to senators aside from California’s Boxer and Feinstein, and discovered that it can’t be done. These weasels have set it up so that they only hear from their own constituents. That being the case, I don’t want any of these human slugs introducing or voting on legislation that affects the entire nation. If they don’t want to hear from me, I sure don’t want to hear from them.
Getting back to AARP, the first time I was aware of their disinterest in the elderly came some years ago when I pitched their monthly magazine, Modern Maturity, a piece about the legendary composer of movie scores, Elmer Bernstein. Because the man was still going strong in his 80s, I assumed they would jump at the opportunity. The editor’s candid response was they weren’t interested because he was too old and that they were seeking a younger audience!
Quite honestly, I don’t even understand why Democrats are supporting Obama’s health plan. Assuming they’re aware that even during the presidential campaign, Obama suggested that a reasonable option for old folks in dire need of operations was to rely on pain pills, I can’t help wondering if liberals are so busy worrying about the health and comfort of terrorists down in Gitmo that they simply don’t have the time or inclination to fret over the plight of their own parents and grandparents. Or perhaps they’re simply eager to collect their inheritances.
The idea that any sane person would be in favor of the government’s running the health industry simply doesn’t compute. Leaving such important matters in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats is beyond mind-boggling; it’s lunacy. Have they all so quickly forgotten what life is like at the post office and at the DMV? For my part, I’m still having flashbacks from a decade ago when I had to deal with a representative of the IRS, and that was after we were told that this was a kinder and gentler IRS. Frankly, for that to have been anyone’s idea of kinder and gentler, in its prior existence it must have been run by the Marquis de Sade. In my experience, the only difference between dealing with the Internal Revenue Service and the Mafia is that the thugs who collect for the Mob dress a lot nattier.
What’s more, please keep in mind that when the IRS screws you over, it’s only about money; it isn’t your life or the life of your loved ones.
A friend reminded me that back in 1940, Americans were able to choose between not only FDR and Wendell Willkie, but a third candidate, Gracie Allen. Her party was the Surprise Party and her slogan was “Down with common sense. Vote for Gracie.”
She proposed that Congress would get a 10% bonus, but only when the country prospered. She also favored extending Civil Service to all branches of government because “a little politeness goes a long way.”
Gracie had no vice-president on her ticket because, she vowed, she would tolerate no vice in her administration.
About the national debt, she suggested, “It’s something to be proud of; it’s the biggest in the world, isn’t it?”
On foreign relations: “They’re all right with me, but when they come, they’ve got to bring their own bedding.”
When asked with which party she was affiliated, she replied, “I may take a drink now and then, but I never get affiliated.” And when asked if she would recognize Russia, she said, “I don’t know. I meet so many people.”
She actually had a campaign song, with one of its lines being “If the country’s going Gracie, so can you.”
Gracie even received the endorsement of Harvard University, but of course that was back when Harvard still had standards and weren’t employing racist numbskulls like Professor Henry Gates.
By the time the ballots were counted, Gracie only got a few hundred votes, but she’d gotten a lot of laughs.
In 2008, Obama just kept repeating “Hope and Change” and got 64 million votes, and now, with unemployment over 10%, inflation going through the roof while the dollar sinks like a stone, and a health care plan straight out of “Brave New World,” nobody’s laughing.
My question is: Where is Gracie Allen when you really need her?
If I had to explain Americans to a Martian, I would be hard-pressed. It would be especially difficult when it came to liberals. But, there are even conservatives who confound me. For instance, why would any Republican belong to AARP? They might just as well skip the middleman and send their money directly to Howard Dean and the DNC.
Judging by the organization’s enthusiastic support of ObamaCare, which should really be called ObamaDoesn’tcare, it’s obvious that the only old people AARP gives a hoot about are Robert Byrd, Arlen Specter, Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid.
Speaking of senators, I have on occasion tried to send e-mails on important issues to senators aside from California’s Boxer and Feinstein, and discovered that it can’t be done. These weasels have set it up so that they only hear from their own constituents. That being the case, I don’t want any of these human slugs introducing or voting on legislation that affects the entire nation. If they don’t want to hear from me, I sure don’t want to hear from them.
Getting back to AARP, the first time I was aware of their disinterest in the elderly came some years ago when I pitched their monthly magazine, Modern Maturity, a piece about the legendary composer of movie scores, Elmer Bernstein. Because the man was still going strong in his 80s, I assumed they would jump at the opportunity. The editor’s candid response was they weren’t interested because he was too old and that they were seeking a younger audience!
Quite honestly, I don’t even understand why Democrats are supporting Obama’s health plan. Assuming they’re aware that even during the presidential campaign, Obama suggested that a reasonable option for old folks in dire need of operations was to rely on pain pills, I can’t help wondering if liberals are so busy worrying about the health and comfort of terrorists down in Gitmo that they simply don’t have the time or inclination to fret over the plight of their own parents and grandparents. Or perhaps they’re simply eager to collect their inheritances.
The idea that any sane person would be in favor of the government’s running the health industry simply doesn’t compute. Leaving such important matters in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats is beyond mind-boggling; it’s lunacy. Have they all so quickly forgotten what life is like at the post office and at the DMV? For my part, I’m still having flashbacks from a decade ago when I had to deal with a representative of the IRS, and that was after we were told that this was a kinder and gentler IRS. Frankly, for that to have been anyone’s idea of kinder and gentler, in its prior existence it must have been run by the Marquis de Sade. In my experience, the only difference between dealing with the Internal Revenue Service and the Mafia is that the thugs who collect for the Mob dress a lot nattier.
What’s more, please keep in mind that when the IRS screws you over, it’s only about money; it isn’t your life or the life of your loved ones.
A friend reminded me that back in 1940, Americans were able to choose between not only FDR and Wendell Willkie, but a third candidate, Gracie Allen. Her party was the Surprise Party and her slogan was “Down with common sense. Vote for Gracie.”
She proposed that Congress would get a 10% bonus, but only when the country prospered. She also favored extending Civil Service to all branches of government because “a little politeness goes a long way.”
Gracie had no vice-president on her ticket because, she vowed, she would tolerate no vice in her administration.
About the national debt, she suggested, “It’s something to be proud of; it’s the biggest in the world, isn’t it?”
On foreign relations: “They’re all right with me, but when they come, they’ve got to bring their own bedding.”
When asked with which party she was affiliated, she replied, “I may take a drink now and then, but I never get affiliated.” And when asked if she would recognize Russia, she said, “I don’t know. I meet so many people.”
She actually had a campaign song, with one of its lines being “If the country’s going Gracie, so can you.”
Gracie even received the endorsement of Harvard University, but of course that was back when Harvard still had standards and weren’t employing racist numbskulls like Professor Henry Gates.
By the time the ballots were counted, Gracie only got a few hundred votes, but she’d gotten a lot of laughs.
In 2008, Obama just kept repeating “Hope and Change” and got 64 million votes, and now, with unemployment over 10%, inflation going through the roof while the dollar sinks like a stone, and a health care plan straight out of “Brave New World,” nobody’s laughing.
My question is: Where is Gracie Allen when you really need her?
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Straight Poop On Islam
by Burt Prelutsky
I suspect that because George Bush and Condoleezza Rice were so respectful of Muslims, constantly telling us that theirs is a religion of peace, some otherwise sensible Americans actually began to believe it. Now we have a president who not only kowtows to a Saudi prince, but carries on as if Israeli homes are more threatening than Iranian nukes.
What is wrong with our leaders? Are they worried that they won’t be invited to those cool Ramadan parties? The Islamics have been actively at war with us for 30 years and generally at war with western civilization for well over a thousand years, and still we pay lip service to these people in a way we never did with Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union. Is it because the Muslims commit sadism and murder in the name of religion and not country? If anything, I would think that would make their evil acts all the more contemptible.
Still, I would contend that Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are not as dangerous as America’s liberals. The Islamic terrorists can only kill so many people, but those on the Left are doing everything in their power to eviscerate America. Cap and Trade can destroy our industrial might; Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus programs combined with his delusional health care plan will not only bankrupt our nation, but lead inevitably to a rate of inflation that will impress even Jimmy Carter; and the budget cuts directed at our military and our missile defense system will make us increasingly vulnerable to our various enemies.
The problem is that liberals are not only nuts, but inconsistent. They very much want to send our military to Africa to stop the savagery in the Sudan, but didn’t want to see it employed against the equally barbaric Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot or Ho Chi Minh. Funny how you never hear them insist that we have no business in Darfur because Sudan didn’t attack us on 9/11 or point out that we have no compelling interest in sub-Sahara Africa. But that’s to be expected when people get their information from Bill Maher and Jon Stewart and their talking points from the likes of Bono and the Dixie Chicks.
Clearly, the Left wants America to be a toothless tiger, rather like the U.N. What they fail to grasp is that as America goes, so goes freedom everywhere. Or perhaps they think the French will do a better job of policing the world. The French, alas, can’t even police Paris.
Speaking of liberals, the irony is that so many of them who never believed God even existed are now convinced that He is alive and well and going out on date nights with Michelle.
Getting back to Muslims, there are people who would insist that we should distinguish between those who cut off the heads of their innocent victims and those who, rumor has it, just want to live and let live. Well, I keep trying, heaven knows, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
For instance, recently I read about a stomach-turning incident that took place in Phoenix, Arizona. It seems that four boys between the ages of nine and 14 lured an eight-year-old girl into a shed and took turns raping her. While that was pretty damn loathsome, what was even more disgusting is what took place afterward. In the little girl’s presence, her father, a Muslim refugee from Liberia, told the police, “Take her. I don’t want her.”
It seems that in what passes for their culture, the child had brought shame on the family.
Now I understand that any country that keeps electing people like Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer and Barack Obama, the killer B’s as it were, doesn’t have terribly high standards, but assuming we have any at all, will someone please explain why we’re allowing these degenerates into the country?
I suspect that because George Bush and Condoleezza Rice were so respectful of Muslims, constantly telling us that theirs is a religion of peace, some otherwise sensible Americans actually began to believe it. Now we have a president who not only kowtows to a Saudi prince, but carries on as if Israeli homes are more threatening than Iranian nukes.
What is wrong with our leaders? Are they worried that they won’t be invited to those cool Ramadan parties? The Islamics have been actively at war with us for 30 years and generally at war with western civilization for well over a thousand years, and still we pay lip service to these people in a way we never did with Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union. Is it because the Muslims commit sadism and murder in the name of religion and not country? If anything, I would think that would make their evil acts all the more contemptible.
Still, I would contend that Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are not as dangerous as America’s liberals. The Islamic terrorists can only kill so many people, but those on the Left are doing everything in their power to eviscerate America. Cap and Trade can destroy our industrial might; Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus programs combined with his delusional health care plan will not only bankrupt our nation, but lead inevitably to a rate of inflation that will impress even Jimmy Carter; and the budget cuts directed at our military and our missile defense system will make us increasingly vulnerable to our various enemies.
The problem is that liberals are not only nuts, but inconsistent. They very much want to send our military to Africa to stop the savagery in the Sudan, but didn’t want to see it employed against the equally barbaric Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot or Ho Chi Minh. Funny how you never hear them insist that we have no business in Darfur because Sudan didn’t attack us on 9/11 or point out that we have no compelling interest in sub-Sahara Africa. But that’s to be expected when people get their information from Bill Maher and Jon Stewart and their talking points from the likes of Bono and the Dixie Chicks.
Clearly, the Left wants America to be a toothless tiger, rather like the U.N. What they fail to grasp is that as America goes, so goes freedom everywhere. Or perhaps they think the French will do a better job of policing the world. The French, alas, can’t even police Paris.
Speaking of liberals, the irony is that so many of them who never believed God even existed are now convinced that He is alive and well and going out on date nights with Michelle.
Getting back to Muslims, there are people who would insist that we should distinguish between those who cut off the heads of their innocent victims and those who, rumor has it, just want to live and let live. Well, I keep trying, heaven knows, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
For instance, recently I read about a stomach-turning incident that took place in Phoenix, Arizona. It seems that four boys between the ages of nine and 14 lured an eight-year-old girl into a shed and took turns raping her. While that was pretty damn loathsome, what was even more disgusting is what took place afterward. In the little girl’s presence, her father, a Muslim refugee from Liberia, told the police, “Take her. I don’t want her.”
It seems that in what passes for their culture, the child had brought shame on the family.
Now I understand that any country that keeps electing people like Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer and Barack Obama, the killer B’s as it were, doesn’t have terribly high standards, but assuming we have any at all, will someone please explain why we’re allowing these degenerates into the country?
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Even Wide-Awake, I'm Having Nightmares
by Burt Prelutsky
When people used to conjure up an example of a man frazzled to within an inch of his life, they would refer to a one-armed paperhanger. On film, we had Mickey Mouse, cast as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in “Fantasia,” bedeviled by a battalion of marching brooms. But so far as I’m concerned, when it comes to impossible tasks, nothing quite compares to being a conservative columnist trying to keep tabs on all the dreadful mischief being perpetrated by the loonies on the Left.
We could begin with whether or not Dick Cheney actually kept Congress out of the loop when the CIA was formulating a plan to assassinate Islamic terrorists. But, as usual, the liberals have it ass-backwards. The scandal would have been if Cheney had ever uttered a single word about it to an elected official. Next to having lunch with a generous lobbyist, there’s nothing a congressman or senator enjoys more than currying favor by passing along state secrets to the New York Times, so that our own version of Pravda can splash a traitorous headline across its front page. Liberals will occasionally make a movie about the courageous Germans who attempted to assassinate Hitler, but they get their panties in a knot when our government tries to kill Islamic terrorists. Hell, they even break out in hives if the human scum locked up in Gitmo don’t get their prayer mats dry-cleaned on a regular basis.
When it comes to our national security, keeping the likes of Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank and John Kerry in the loop would be the height of insanity. The only loop appropriate for most of the ninnies in Congress is one hanging from the branch of a very tall tree.
So far as I can tell, the only real difference between members of Congress and cockroaches is that one of the two species has a few more legs than the other.
Friends of mine keep trying to make me feel better by insisting that Obama’s poll numbers are falling. The trouble is that all he has to do is get a dog or nominate a female Hispanic to a job above her pay scale and the numbers start to rise. The guy is doing his best to destroy our industries with Cap and Trade; bankrupt our economy with trillion dollar stimulus bills; bring Cuban-style socialized medicine to America; turn a blind eye to nuclear-armed enemies; fund a criminal organization like ACORN with taxpayer dollars; allow the DNC to take control of the census; threaten to silence the opposition through the so-called Fairness Doctrine; and do everything but fly the hammer-and-sickle from the roof of the White House, and yet let him be photographed holding hands with Michelle and the kids, and millions of us seem ready to give him a “Well done!” and a friendly pat on the back.
Which is why I’m even more frightened of the electorate than I am of the elected. Politicians, even those as dangerously demented as Pelosi, Reid, Waxman and Obama, come and eventually go, but really dumb voters, it seems clear, are here to stay.
What Obama and his corrupt cronies are trying to do to health care should not only anger every American, it should have them reading up on guerrilla warfare. Ever since the presidential campaign, when Obama told the guy with the ailing elderly mother that instead of an operation, he should consider pain pills as the more sensible option, I knew this cold-blooded good-for-nothing was a man born, not to govern a nation, but to run a gulag.
But what makes it even worse is that the people in Washington who’d like to put old folks on ice floes and stick the rest of us in under-staffed medical clinics have no intention of sharing our sorry fates. Do you think Charley Rangel is going to take a number and twiddle his thumbs if he needs to have his 79-year-old gall bladder removed? Do you think that Marian Robinson, Obama’s 72-year-old mother-in-law, is going to be given a pain pill if she ever needs a liver transplant? As George Orwell put it in “Animal Farm,” which could well have served as a training manual for Obama’s administration, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Still, say what you will about the Obamas, no one can deny that they aren’t doing all they can to combat unemployment. For instance, Barack is appointing so many czars, you’d think his last name was Romanov. In the meantime, Michelle has gathered a larger staff of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting than Madame Pompadour and Madonna put together. There were, at last count, 22 people answering directing to the First Lady, costing the taxpayer roughly $1.6 million a year. In Mrs. Obama’s case, these servants are called, among other things, Director of Communications for the First Lady, Deputy Social Director, Director of Scheduling and Associate Director of Correspondence. I swear there’s even an underling who goes by the title of Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence. In the Obama White House, it seems that even the gofers have gofers.
Finally, as a baseball fan, I was annoyed to see Obama all over this year’s All Star Game. Even before we were all treated to the embarrassing sight of this adult male tossing out the first pitch like a little girl, we had to watch him making small talk with the players in the locker-room. As if that wasn’t more than enough Obama at a sporting event, he next popped up in the broadcast booth with Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, trying his best to sound like a regular guy. I was reminded of John Kerry during the 2004 campaign when he tried his darndest to pass himself off in his spanking new Abercrombie & Fitch outfit as an outdoors man. Right -- there was nothing good old John ever enjoyed more after a day spent tramping through the woods stalking bears than taking off his boots and speaking French with his hunting buddies over some aged brie and a whimsical little Cabernet.
And, finally, although I wasn’t at the All Star Game in St. Louis, I know someone who was, and she insists that there were more catcalls than cheers for the Commander-in-Chief when he was driven out in the royal golf cart, but that the boos were apparently toned down mechanically by those in charge of the telecast. However, his handlers didn’t want to take any chances of a slip-up, especially not after the president’s generally reliable TelePrompter had recently broken down and left the great orator speechless, and that was the actual reason Obama was sporting a Chicago White Sox jacket. It wasn’t because he’s such a diehard fan or, as he said to McCarver and Buck, “My wife says I look cute in it,” but because it would then appear to the TV audience that he was being booed by the home crowd because he wasn’t wearing a Cardinal jacket.
Call me a cynic, but I have to assume that after Obama’s carefully choreographed appearance at the baseball game, his poll numbers went up.
When people used to conjure up an example of a man frazzled to within an inch of his life, they would refer to a one-armed paperhanger. On film, we had Mickey Mouse, cast as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in “Fantasia,” bedeviled by a battalion of marching brooms. But so far as I’m concerned, when it comes to impossible tasks, nothing quite compares to being a conservative columnist trying to keep tabs on all the dreadful mischief being perpetrated by the loonies on the Left.
We could begin with whether or not Dick Cheney actually kept Congress out of the loop when the CIA was formulating a plan to assassinate Islamic terrorists. But, as usual, the liberals have it ass-backwards. The scandal would have been if Cheney had ever uttered a single word about it to an elected official. Next to having lunch with a generous lobbyist, there’s nothing a congressman or senator enjoys more than currying favor by passing along state secrets to the New York Times, so that our own version of Pravda can splash a traitorous headline across its front page. Liberals will occasionally make a movie about the courageous Germans who attempted to assassinate Hitler, but they get their panties in a knot when our government tries to kill Islamic terrorists. Hell, they even break out in hives if the human scum locked up in Gitmo don’t get their prayer mats dry-cleaned on a regular basis.
When it comes to our national security, keeping the likes of Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank and John Kerry in the loop would be the height of insanity. The only loop appropriate for most of the ninnies in Congress is one hanging from the branch of a very tall tree.
So far as I can tell, the only real difference between members of Congress and cockroaches is that one of the two species has a few more legs than the other.
Friends of mine keep trying to make me feel better by insisting that Obama’s poll numbers are falling. The trouble is that all he has to do is get a dog or nominate a female Hispanic to a job above her pay scale and the numbers start to rise. The guy is doing his best to destroy our industries with Cap and Trade; bankrupt our economy with trillion dollar stimulus bills; bring Cuban-style socialized medicine to America; turn a blind eye to nuclear-armed enemies; fund a criminal organization like ACORN with taxpayer dollars; allow the DNC to take control of the census; threaten to silence the opposition through the so-called Fairness Doctrine; and do everything but fly the hammer-and-sickle from the roof of the White House, and yet let him be photographed holding hands with Michelle and the kids, and millions of us seem ready to give him a “Well done!” and a friendly pat on the back.
Which is why I’m even more frightened of the electorate than I am of the elected. Politicians, even those as dangerously demented as Pelosi, Reid, Waxman and Obama, come and eventually go, but really dumb voters, it seems clear, are here to stay.
What Obama and his corrupt cronies are trying to do to health care should not only anger every American, it should have them reading up on guerrilla warfare. Ever since the presidential campaign, when Obama told the guy with the ailing elderly mother that instead of an operation, he should consider pain pills as the more sensible option, I knew this cold-blooded good-for-nothing was a man born, not to govern a nation, but to run a gulag.
But what makes it even worse is that the people in Washington who’d like to put old folks on ice floes and stick the rest of us in under-staffed medical clinics have no intention of sharing our sorry fates. Do you think Charley Rangel is going to take a number and twiddle his thumbs if he needs to have his 79-year-old gall bladder removed? Do you think that Marian Robinson, Obama’s 72-year-old mother-in-law, is going to be given a pain pill if she ever needs a liver transplant? As George Orwell put it in “Animal Farm,” which could well have served as a training manual for Obama’s administration, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Still, say what you will about the Obamas, no one can deny that they aren’t doing all they can to combat unemployment. For instance, Barack is appointing so many czars, you’d think his last name was Romanov. In the meantime, Michelle has gathered a larger staff of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting than Madame Pompadour and Madonna put together. There were, at last count, 22 people answering directing to the First Lady, costing the taxpayer roughly $1.6 million a year. In Mrs. Obama’s case, these servants are called, among other things, Director of Communications for the First Lady, Deputy Social Director, Director of Scheduling and Associate Director of Correspondence. I swear there’s even an underling who goes by the title of Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence. In the Obama White House, it seems that even the gofers have gofers.
Finally, as a baseball fan, I was annoyed to see Obama all over this year’s All Star Game. Even before we were all treated to the embarrassing sight of this adult male tossing out the first pitch like a little girl, we had to watch him making small talk with the players in the locker-room. As if that wasn’t more than enough Obama at a sporting event, he next popped up in the broadcast booth with Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, trying his best to sound like a regular guy. I was reminded of John Kerry during the 2004 campaign when he tried his darndest to pass himself off in his spanking new Abercrombie & Fitch outfit as an outdoors man. Right -- there was nothing good old John ever enjoyed more after a day spent tramping through the woods stalking bears than taking off his boots and speaking French with his hunting buddies over some aged brie and a whimsical little Cabernet.
And, finally, although I wasn’t at the All Star Game in St. Louis, I know someone who was, and she insists that there were more catcalls than cheers for the Commander-in-Chief when he was driven out in the royal golf cart, but that the boos were apparently toned down mechanically by those in charge of the telecast. However, his handlers didn’t want to take any chances of a slip-up, especially not after the president’s generally reliable TelePrompter had recently broken down and left the great orator speechless, and that was the actual reason Obama was sporting a Chicago White Sox jacket. It wasn’t because he’s such a diehard fan or, as he said to McCarver and Buck, “My wife says I look cute in it,” but because it would then appear to the TV audience that he was being booed by the home crowd because he wasn’t wearing a Cardinal jacket.
Call me a cynic, but I have to assume that after Obama’s carefully choreographed appearance at the baseball game, his poll numbers went up.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Burt The Plumber
by Burt Prelutsky
During last year’s presidential campaign, Joe Wurzelbacher raised a lot of hackles in liberal circles when he got Barack Obama to admit he was in favor of the federal government redistributing America’s wealth.
It was a landmark moment. For one thing, it led Helen Jones-Kelley, Director of Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services, to doing her utmost to make the poor guy’s life miserable, thus conveying the message to Obama’s critics to keep their yaps shut if they knew what was good for them. At the same time, it taught Obama to keep his radical agenda as vague and simple-minded as “hope and change,” leaving it to America’s most ignorant and gullible voters to fill in the blanks any way they liked.
Well, I think it’s high time that we all became plumbers and started plumbing for answers. For instance, wouldn’t it have made more sense if the Democrats really wanted to stimulate the economy, and not just pass a lifetime’s worth of pork at one fell-swoop, to have given the trillion dollars back to those of us who coughed it up in the first place?
I mean, let us say, for the sake of argument, that a hundred million adults are in the U.S. legally and actually pay income taxes. If you divide that number into a trillion dollars, each one would wind up with $10,000. Now you can’t tell me that if every tax-paying adult in America suddenly received a check in that amount, it wouldn’t do more to cure America’s financial woes than paying for Harry Reid’s train or that tunnel that turtles are supposed to start using down in Florida. What’s next? An elevator for elderly alligators?
I would like to ask President Obama why the Trade and Cap bill that will double our energy bills while providing less and less energy for our industries? Why all the sweet talk for our sworn enemies and harsh words for our allies? Why the $250,000 date night in New York, not to mention the pricey sneakers and the $5,000 purse for the missus when most Americans are suffering through a financial malaise? Is it any wonder that a lot of us look at the two of you gadding about and see Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI?
Before I get to my next question, I have a confession to make. Henry Waxman and I have been friends for about 50 years, going back to our days at UCLA. Now it’s true we haven’t seen all that much of each other in the three decades since he went to Washington, and that the last time we spoke, a few years ago, we got into an argument because he said he and some of his colleagues planned to investigate FOX regarding biased news reporting. I told him I had no problem with that so long as they next investigated the NY Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, MSNBC and the three major networks. From the astonished look he gave me, you might have thought I had suddenly begun speaking Cantonese. It was at that moment that I first became aware that because all left-wingers are in lock-step on every conceivable issue, they actually believe that the mainstream media is totally honest and objective, and not the slightest bit partisan. It was an enlightening, albeit terrifying, insight.
All that being said, the question I would put to Henry is how he could possibly, with a straight face, say the following to Parade magazine: “President Obama recently said to us in a committee meeting that we could all lead better lives if we weren’t in public service; we could make more money, spend more time with our families. But sometimes, he said, you have an opportunity to do things that are important and make life better for millions. That’s why we’re all here.”
The fact of the matter is, the rest of us could lead better lives if those schmoes weren’t in public service. Even calling it “public service” is an exercise in propaganda. It makes it sound as if these weasels are busily washing the feet of lepers like Mother Teresa or housing the poor and crippled in their own homes. These are over-paid egomaniacs who are provided with huge staffs at no cost to themselves, who are forever going off on junkets to exotic locales under the guise of being fact-finding missions, and spend even less time on the job than tenured college professors.
I mean, a joke’s a joke, but how could Obama and Waxman believe for a second that people like Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, and the idiots on the Black Congressional Caucus could make a better living outside of politics? Half of these people would be trolls living under bridges if they ever lost an election. Who on earth would hire them? There are, after all, only so many circuses in America, and only so many elephants in those circuses, and only so many brooms to go around.
Finally, speaking of trolls, my question to Al Franken would be, in response to his stating at Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing that she is the most qualified Supreme Court nominee in 100 years, who did he have in mind? I checked, and back in 1909, the nine justices were David Brewer, William Day, Melville Fuller, John Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph McKenna, William Moody, Rufus Peckham and Edward White. The only one I had ever heard of was Justice Holmes and it turns out he was a confirmed racist.
If Ms. Sotomayor is the best since then, Franken must be convinced that she is superior to, say, Benjamin Cardozo, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Thurgood Marshall, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Earl Warren. Even I, who can’t stand listening to his whiney voice, would certainly enjoy hearing the fatuous junior senator from Minnesota explain that remark.
If, as I suspect, the reason for Franken’s hyperbole is simply because of Sotomayor’s race and gender, the two things that make her so doggone extra special in her own eyes -- at least up until the time she was being grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee -- he shouldn’t have limited her greatness to a paltry hundred years. In fact, it’s almost insulting. After all, inasmuch as she’s the first female Hispanic nominee, he could have said she was the greatest in a billion or even, to use Obama’s favorite number, a trillion years.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Joe Wurzelbacher raised a lot of hackles in liberal circles when he got Barack Obama to admit he was in favor of the federal government redistributing America’s wealth.
It was a landmark moment. For one thing, it led Helen Jones-Kelley, Director of Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services, to doing her utmost to make the poor guy’s life miserable, thus conveying the message to Obama’s critics to keep their yaps shut if they knew what was good for them. At the same time, it taught Obama to keep his radical agenda as vague and simple-minded as “hope and change,” leaving it to America’s most ignorant and gullible voters to fill in the blanks any way they liked.
Well, I think it’s high time that we all became plumbers and started plumbing for answers. For instance, wouldn’t it have made more sense if the Democrats really wanted to stimulate the economy, and not just pass a lifetime’s worth of pork at one fell-swoop, to have given the trillion dollars back to those of us who coughed it up in the first place?
I mean, let us say, for the sake of argument, that a hundred million adults are in the U.S. legally and actually pay income taxes. If you divide that number into a trillion dollars, each one would wind up with $10,000. Now you can’t tell me that if every tax-paying adult in America suddenly received a check in that amount, it wouldn’t do more to cure America’s financial woes than paying for Harry Reid’s train or that tunnel that turtles are supposed to start using down in Florida. What’s next? An elevator for elderly alligators?
I would like to ask President Obama why the Trade and Cap bill that will double our energy bills while providing less and less energy for our industries? Why all the sweet talk for our sworn enemies and harsh words for our allies? Why the $250,000 date night in New York, not to mention the pricey sneakers and the $5,000 purse for the missus when most Americans are suffering through a financial malaise? Is it any wonder that a lot of us look at the two of you gadding about and see Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI?
Before I get to my next question, I have a confession to make. Henry Waxman and I have been friends for about 50 years, going back to our days at UCLA. Now it’s true we haven’t seen all that much of each other in the three decades since he went to Washington, and that the last time we spoke, a few years ago, we got into an argument because he said he and some of his colleagues planned to investigate FOX regarding biased news reporting. I told him I had no problem with that so long as they next investigated the NY Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, MSNBC and the three major networks. From the astonished look he gave me, you might have thought I had suddenly begun speaking Cantonese. It was at that moment that I first became aware that because all left-wingers are in lock-step on every conceivable issue, they actually believe that the mainstream media is totally honest and objective, and not the slightest bit partisan. It was an enlightening, albeit terrifying, insight.
All that being said, the question I would put to Henry is how he could possibly, with a straight face, say the following to Parade magazine: “President Obama recently said to us in a committee meeting that we could all lead better lives if we weren’t in public service; we could make more money, spend more time with our families. But sometimes, he said, you have an opportunity to do things that are important and make life better for millions. That’s why we’re all here.”
The fact of the matter is, the rest of us could lead better lives if those schmoes weren’t in public service. Even calling it “public service” is an exercise in propaganda. It makes it sound as if these weasels are busily washing the feet of lepers like Mother Teresa or housing the poor and crippled in their own homes. These are over-paid egomaniacs who are provided with huge staffs at no cost to themselves, who are forever going off on junkets to exotic locales under the guise of being fact-finding missions, and spend even less time on the job than tenured college professors.
I mean, a joke’s a joke, but how could Obama and Waxman believe for a second that people like Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, and the idiots on the Black Congressional Caucus could make a better living outside of politics? Half of these people would be trolls living under bridges if they ever lost an election. Who on earth would hire them? There are, after all, only so many circuses in America, and only so many elephants in those circuses, and only so many brooms to go around.
Finally, speaking of trolls, my question to Al Franken would be, in response to his stating at Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing that she is the most qualified Supreme Court nominee in 100 years, who did he have in mind? I checked, and back in 1909, the nine justices were David Brewer, William Day, Melville Fuller, John Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph McKenna, William Moody, Rufus Peckham and Edward White. The only one I had ever heard of was Justice Holmes and it turns out he was a confirmed racist.
If Ms. Sotomayor is the best since then, Franken must be convinced that she is superior to, say, Benjamin Cardozo, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Thurgood Marshall, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Earl Warren. Even I, who can’t stand listening to his whiney voice, would certainly enjoy hearing the fatuous junior senator from Minnesota explain that remark.
If, as I suspect, the reason for Franken’s hyperbole is simply because of Sotomayor’s race and gender, the two things that make her so doggone extra special in her own eyes -- at least up until the time she was being grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee -- he shouldn’t have limited her greatness to a paltry hundred years. In fact, it’s almost insulting. After all, inasmuch as she’s the first female Hispanic nominee, he could have said she was the greatest in a billion or even, to use Obama’s favorite number, a trillion years.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Case Against Mortarboarding
by Burt Prelutsky
I have received a number of e-mails over the years from disgruntled parents griping about the left-wing indoctrination their kids are forced to undergo at colleges and universities all over America. One minute, it seems, the kids are sane, or at least as sane as one can expect of 18-year-olds, and the next thing you know they’re parroting the likes of Ward Churchill, William Ayers and Noam Chomsky, bad-mouthing America and yodeling the praises of such left-wing troglodytes as Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers and Barack Obama.
I feel their frustration. Even if the little nincompoops can’t do long division or write a coherent sentence, parents feel like child abusers if they don’t pony up the dough to send their kids off for what is laughingly referred to as higher education.
If I were running things, most high school grads would enter trade schools. America will always need nurses, plumbers, carpenters, glaziers and mechanics. What nobody needs is some 21-year-old schnook who’s wasted four years and most of his inheritance majoring in black, Hispanic or lesbian, studies. And, then, to make matters worse, because like the Scarecrow of Oz, they have a sheepskin, they’re actually convinced they’re smarter than their parents.
One of my readers, Penny Alfonso, of Glendale, California, shared a conversation she had with her daughter. “I told her I won’t pay the tuition for any classes that end in the word “studies”. I have also told her that while I have no right to tell her how to think, if she comes home hating America and spewing the lies of the leftists, I will tell her I love her, and that she has the right to believe whatever she wants to believe, but I don’t have to pay for it. In the 20 years of her life, if she’s learned nothing else, she has learned that I am completely serious about this.”
If more parents adopted this attitude, the state of education would improve in a hurry. The lefty professors want to mold young minds, but the administrators just want your money. So use your clout where it counts. Adopt Mrs. Alfonso’s declaration as a Bill of Parental Rights.
Of course, the other thing I would promote is an end to the tenure system. The original idea behind it was to protect professors from being fired because of their unpopular political beliefs, but in 2009, conservatives aren’t hired in the first place, so the only people whose jobs come with a lifetime guarantee are those addlebrained morons, safely ensconced in the Humanities, espousing liberal claptrap.
Somebody recently took me to task for referring to Michael Jackson as a pedophile. This yutz pointed out that Jackson had never been convicted in a court of law, as if that proved anything. The fact remains that the King of Pap had paid out millions of dollars in hush money to keep a case from going to trial. And, by his own admission, he admitted he enjoyed sleeping with young boys. Where I come from, if it waddles, swims and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Whenever people use that court of law argument to make a point, I know they’re desperate. Heck, O.J. Simpson and Al Capone were never convicted of murder, and Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Idi Amin and Kim Jong-il, have never even been convicted of jay-walking.
Something else I always find irksome is when Obama’s liberal groupies, along with a few conservative commentators, deny that the President is a left-wing ideologue. All of his schemes, from gobbling up car companies and banks to nationalizing health care and redistributing wealth, show his true colors. As I say, if it waddles, swims and quacks like a duck, feel free to pop it in the oven and serve it with string beans and sweet potatoes at Christmas.
In fact, while mulling over the man who sits in the Oval Office, I was reminded of a riddle from my childhood. You’d be asked what was black and white and read all over, and the answer was a newspaper. These days, I’m afraid the appropriate answer to what is black and white and red all over is Barack Obama.
I have received a number of e-mails over the years from disgruntled parents griping about the left-wing indoctrination their kids are forced to undergo at colleges and universities all over America. One minute, it seems, the kids are sane, or at least as sane as one can expect of 18-year-olds, and the next thing you know they’re parroting the likes of Ward Churchill, William Ayers and Noam Chomsky, bad-mouthing America and yodeling the praises of such left-wing troglodytes as Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers and Barack Obama.
I feel their frustration. Even if the little nincompoops can’t do long division or write a coherent sentence, parents feel like child abusers if they don’t pony up the dough to send their kids off for what is laughingly referred to as higher education.
If I were running things, most high school grads would enter trade schools. America will always need nurses, plumbers, carpenters, glaziers and mechanics. What nobody needs is some 21-year-old schnook who’s wasted four years and most of his inheritance majoring in black, Hispanic or lesbian, studies. And, then, to make matters worse, because like the Scarecrow of Oz, they have a sheepskin, they’re actually convinced they’re smarter than their parents.
One of my readers, Penny Alfonso, of Glendale, California, shared a conversation she had with her daughter. “I told her I won’t pay the tuition for any classes that end in the word “studies”. I have also told her that while I have no right to tell her how to think, if she comes home hating America and spewing the lies of the leftists, I will tell her I love her, and that she has the right to believe whatever she wants to believe, but I don’t have to pay for it. In the 20 years of her life, if she’s learned nothing else, she has learned that I am completely serious about this.”
If more parents adopted this attitude, the state of education would improve in a hurry. The lefty professors want to mold young minds, but the administrators just want your money. So use your clout where it counts. Adopt Mrs. Alfonso’s declaration as a Bill of Parental Rights.
Of course, the other thing I would promote is an end to the tenure system. The original idea behind it was to protect professors from being fired because of their unpopular political beliefs, but in 2009, conservatives aren’t hired in the first place, so the only people whose jobs come with a lifetime guarantee are those addlebrained morons, safely ensconced in the Humanities, espousing liberal claptrap.
Somebody recently took me to task for referring to Michael Jackson as a pedophile. This yutz pointed out that Jackson had never been convicted in a court of law, as if that proved anything. The fact remains that the King of Pap had paid out millions of dollars in hush money to keep a case from going to trial. And, by his own admission, he admitted he enjoyed sleeping with young boys. Where I come from, if it waddles, swims and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Whenever people use that court of law argument to make a point, I know they’re desperate. Heck, O.J. Simpson and Al Capone were never convicted of murder, and Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Idi Amin and Kim Jong-il, have never even been convicted of jay-walking.
Something else I always find irksome is when Obama’s liberal groupies, along with a few conservative commentators, deny that the President is a left-wing ideologue. All of his schemes, from gobbling up car companies and banks to nationalizing health care and redistributing wealth, show his true colors. As I say, if it waddles, swims and quacks like a duck, feel free to pop it in the oven and serve it with string beans and sweet potatoes at Christmas.
In fact, while mulling over the man who sits in the Oval Office, I was reminded of a riddle from my childhood. You’d be asked what was black and white and read all over, and the answer was a newspaper. These days, I’m afraid the appropriate answer to what is black and white and red all over is Barack Obama.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Indicting The Usual Suspects
by Burt Prelutsky
Nobody has to tell me things are going from bad to worse in America. The question that preys on my mind is when it was that we began our descent. Some would say it started when Jimmy Carter turned his back on the Shah of Iran, thus providing an impetus for latter-day Islamic terrorism. Others might say it was the first time Bill Clinton dropped his pants in the Oval Office, while still others might contend it began when the Supreme Court determined that the Pursuit of Happiness was a rationale for 80 million abortions on demand.
For all I know, things might have begun sliding the very first time some slack-jawed teenager struck a pose and struck a chord on an imaginary guitar. There was a time, after all, when most American kids were actually given music lessons and learned how to play an actual instrument, and even saved up their allowance to buy sheet music.
Whenever the slide began, in the months since Obama was crowned, we’ve slid faster and further than I would have dreamed possible. Obama keeps huffing and puffing and the federal government just keeps expanding like a gigantic balloon. It’s only a matter of time until it blows up in all our faces.
Not in my wildest nightmares would I have imagined that an American president would travel to countries we’ve bled and died to defend, and apologize for our arrogance. Neither would I have ever expected that the same man who casually dismissed our special relationship with England would curtsy to a Saudi prince; refer to a blood-thirsty Muslim cleric, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader; and butter up a Russian tyrant who cut his eye teeth working for the barbaric KGB.
After all that, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Obama joined Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers in demanding that Honduras allow dictator wannabe Manuel Zelaya back in the country to resume his assault on democracy.
Obama’s groupies in and out of the media used to cry “Foul!” during the campaign whenever people would question the character of a man whose intimate circle included a corrupt Chicago lobbyist, an unrepentant terrorist, a racist minister and a spouse who announced that America was a mean country. It seems that in the past several months, his circle has grown in size, but unfortunately not in character.
The President’s good friend, Al Gore, who stands to clean up, thanks to the Cap and Trade bill, has long campaigned for the greening of America. How long will it take people to wake up to the fact that his major concern is the greening of Al Gore? For good measure, the greedy oaf recently compared the battle over global warming to the war against the Nazis. And, to think, some folks thought PETA was over the top when they compared a chicken farm to Auschwitz.
Speaking of Nazis and Auschwitz reminds me that I wish Israel, a haven for many of those who survived the concentration camps, would stop referring to portions of their country as settlements. Israel was attacked by its Arab enemies, fought back and won. Part of what the Israelis won was turf. It’s how just about every country on earth wound up having its present dimensions. Referring to the land as settlements makes it sound like they’re only borrowing it until the rightful owners come by and pick it up. You might as well call California, Texas and Arizona settlements. Well, come to think of it, I guess La Raza does.
As hard as it is to accept, there’s no getting around the fact that Al Franken is a U.S. senator. On the upside, just as people used to say that any boy could grow up to be president, now people can say that any comedian who’s smug, obnoxious and not the least bit funny, can grow up to be a senator. That being the case, I guess it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that Sen. Franken might one day be joined by the likes of Bill Maher and David Letterman.
It is appropriate, though, that Franken represents Minnesota. Its state bird, after all, is the loon.
Before signing off, I found myself wondering the other day why it is, now that Afghanistan is Obama’s war, I don’t hear the Democrats or their lap dogs in the media referring to it as a quagmire, pointing out that the Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11, and demanding that President Obama announce his exit strategy?
Nobody has to tell me things are going from bad to worse in America. The question that preys on my mind is when it was that we began our descent. Some would say it started when Jimmy Carter turned his back on the Shah of Iran, thus providing an impetus for latter-day Islamic terrorism. Others might say it was the first time Bill Clinton dropped his pants in the Oval Office, while still others might contend it began when the Supreme Court determined that the Pursuit of Happiness was a rationale for 80 million abortions on demand.
For all I know, things might have begun sliding the very first time some slack-jawed teenager struck a pose and struck a chord on an imaginary guitar. There was a time, after all, when most American kids were actually given music lessons and learned how to play an actual instrument, and even saved up their allowance to buy sheet music.
Whenever the slide began, in the months since Obama was crowned, we’ve slid faster and further than I would have dreamed possible. Obama keeps huffing and puffing and the federal government just keeps expanding like a gigantic balloon. It’s only a matter of time until it blows up in all our faces.
Not in my wildest nightmares would I have imagined that an American president would travel to countries we’ve bled and died to defend, and apologize for our arrogance. Neither would I have ever expected that the same man who casually dismissed our special relationship with England would curtsy to a Saudi prince; refer to a blood-thirsty Muslim cleric, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader; and butter up a Russian tyrant who cut his eye teeth working for the barbaric KGB.
After all that, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Obama joined Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers in demanding that Honduras allow dictator wannabe Manuel Zelaya back in the country to resume his assault on democracy.
Obama’s groupies in and out of the media used to cry “Foul!” during the campaign whenever people would question the character of a man whose intimate circle included a corrupt Chicago lobbyist, an unrepentant terrorist, a racist minister and a spouse who announced that America was a mean country. It seems that in the past several months, his circle has grown in size, but unfortunately not in character.
The President’s good friend, Al Gore, who stands to clean up, thanks to the Cap and Trade bill, has long campaigned for the greening of America. How long will it take people to wake up to the fact that his major concern is the greening of Al Gore? For good measure, the greedy oaf recently compared the battle over global warming to the war against the Nazis. And, to think, some folks thought PETA was over the top when they compared a chicken farm to Auschwitz.
Speaking of Nazis and Auschwitz reminds me that I wish Israel, a haven for many of those who survived the concentration camps, would stop referring to portions of their country as settlements. Israel was attacked by its Arab enemies, fought back and won. Part of what the Israelis won was turf. It’s how just about every country on earth wound up having its present dimensions. Referring to the land as settlements makes it sound like they’re only borrowing it until the rightful owners come by and pick it up. You might as well call California, Texas and Arizona settlements. Well, come to think of it, I guess La Raza does.
As hard as it is to accept, there’s no getting around the fact that Al Franken is a U.S. senator. On the upside, just as people used to say that any boy could grow up to be president, now people can say that any comedian who’s smug, obnoxious and not the least bit funny, can grow up to be a senator. That being the case, I guess it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that Sen. Franken might one day be joined by the likes of Bill Maher and David Letterman.
It is appropriate, though, that Franken represents Minnesota. Its state bird, after all, is the loon.
Before signing off, I found myself wondering the other day why it is, now that Afghanistan is Obama’s war, I don’t hear the Democrats or their lap dogs in the media referring to it as a quagmire, pointing out that the Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11, and demanding that President Obama announce his exit strategy?
Monday, August 24, 2009
Notes From The Liberal Front
by Burt Prelutsky
The question that’s been preying on my mind is who is best suited to study those strange beings known as liberals. It strikes me that they’d be fit subjects for psychiatrists, who might be in a position to figure out why they revere the people they do -- people such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Al Gore and Ted Kennedy -- men who haven’t a single notable accomplishment to their name, aside from either winning elections or eliminating them altogether. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate for biologists to delve into the left-wing organism, and determine how it is possible that creatures without brains could have survived so long in an often hostile environment.
If you don’t believe that liberalism is a serious malady, consider that Paul Krugman of the New York Times, when addressing Sonia Sotomayor’s remark about an Hispanic woman being better qualified than a white man to be a judge, said that she was merely being entertaining. Even if Mr. Krugman is, as his comment suggests, more easily entertained than a backward three-year-old, I have a feeling that he wasn’t nearly as forgiving when Trent Lott, on the occasion of Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday in 2002, said it was a shame that the old Dixiecrat hadn’t been elected president in 1948.
Yet another recent example of liberalism in action took place at Harvard, where bright young people go to have their brains exchanged for a pound of hay and humongous egos. It seems that the mucky-mucks at the university found $1.5 million lying around and decided that the best possible use for the money was to create a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies. I guess the good news is that if Barney Frank decides to do us all a big favor and get out of politics, there’s a job opening at his alma mater.
Speaking of liberal goofiness brings us inevitably to Barack Hussein Obama, as he now proudly identifies himself -- at least when he’s addressing Muslims, praising Muslims and, as usual, slandering America. By the way, isn’t it the least bit odd that he never condemns Muslims for hanging on to their religion and their suicide bombs? And even if you’re a liberal, doesn’t it seem peculiar that during his speech in Egypt, he didn’t take a moment to mention how much blood and national treasure America has spent -- and, I would suggest, wasted -- defending Muslims in Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan?
But, then, we mustn’t forget that this is the same chap who went to France and took the opportunity to apologize for America’s arrogance without once mentioning the number of American G.I.s who died, making sure that the French wouldn’t have to give up wine and foie gras for beer and bratwurst.
By the way, do you think the day will ever come when he’ll quit apologizing for America’s arrogance and apologize for his own?
Before setting off for the Middle East, where he gave a thumbs-up to Iran’s nuclear program while condemning Israel for building houses, Obama mentioned that America is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations. As anyone with even a passing interest in facts would know, there are roughly three million Muslims in the United States. Just to give you some idea of how far off Obama was, Indonesia has 195 million, Pakistan has 160 million, India has 154 million. Even Burkina Faso, a place you’ve never even heard of, has seven million. There are, as one of his advisors should have told him before he shot off his mouth, roughly 40 countries in the world saddled with larger Muslim populations than America.
But, then, as we all know, Obama has notoriously weak math skills. It certainly explains why he announced during the campaign that that the U.S. is made up of 57 states. Heck, it may even help explain the way he tosses around our money. It’s a scary thought, but isn’t it just possible that he can’t really tell the difference between million, billion and trillion?
Of course an even scarier thought is that the president actually knows what $1,000,000,000,000 is, and that by burying this nation in insurmountable debt, he can make the 1,000,000,000 Muslims in the world adore him even more than they do Osama bin Laden.
The question that’s been preying on my mind is who is best suited to study those strange beings known as liberals. It strikes me that they’d be fit subjects for psychiatrists, who might be in a position to figure out why they revere the people they do -- people such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Al Gore and Ted Kennedy -- men who haven’t a single notable accomplishment to their name, aside from either winning elections or eliminating them altogether. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate for biologists to delve into the left-wing organism, and determine how it is possible that creatures without brains could have survived so long in an often hostile environment.
If you don’t believe that liberalism is a serious malady, consider that Paul Krugman of the New York Times, when addressing Sonia Sotomayor’s remark about an Hispanic woman being better qualified than a white man to be a judge, said that she was merely being entertaining. Even if Mr. Krugman is, as his comment suggests, more easily entertained than a backward three-year-old, I have a feeling that he wasn’t nearly as forgiving when Trent Lott, on the occasion of Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday in 2002, said it was a shame that the old Dixiecrat hadn’t been elected president in 1948.
Yet another recent example of liberalism in action took place at Harvard, where bright young people go to have their brains exchanged for a pound of hay and humongous egos. It seems that the mucky-mucks at the university found $1.5 million lying around and decided that the best possible use for the money was to create a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies. I guess the good news is that if Barney Frank decides to do us all a big favor and get out of politics, there’s a job opening at his alma mater.
Speaking of liberal goofiness brings us inevitably to Barack Hussein Obama, as he now proudly identifies himself -- at least when he’s addressing Muslims, praising Muslims and, as usual, slandering America. By the way, isn’t it the least bit odd that he never condemns Muslims for hanging on to their religion and their suicide bombs? And even if you’re a liberal, doesn’t it seem peculiar that during his speech in Egypt, he didn’t take a moment to mention how much blood and national treasure America has spent -- and, I would suggest, wasted -- defending Muslims in Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan?
But, then, we mustn’t forget that this is the same chap who went to France and took the opportunity to apologize for America’s arrogance without once mentioning the number of American G.I.s who died, making sure that the French wouldn’t have to give up wine and foie gras for beer and bratwurst.
By the way, do you think the day will ever come when he’ll quit apologizing for America’s arrogance and apologize for his own?
Before setting off for the Middle East, where he gave a thumbs-up to Iran’s nuclear program while condemning Israel for building houses, Obama mentioned that America is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations. As anyone with even a passing interest in facts would know, there are roughly three million Muslims in the United States. Just to give you some idea of how far off Obama was, Indonesia has 195 million, Pakistan has 160 million, India has 154 million. Even Burkina Faso, a place you’ve never even heard of, has seven million. There are, as one of his advisors should have told him before he shot off his mouth, roughly 40 countries in the world saddled with larger Muslim populations than America.
But, then, as we all know, Obama has notoriously weak math skills. It certainly explains why he announced during the campaign that that the U.S. is made up of 57 states. Heck, it may even help explain the way he tosses around our money. It’s a scary thought, but isn’t it just possible that he can’t really tell the difference between million, billion and trillion?
Of course an even scarier thought is that the president actually knows what $1,000,000,000,000 is, and that by burying this nation in insurmountable debt, he can make the 1,000,000,000 Muslims in the world adore him even more than they do Osama bin Laden.
Friday, August 21, 2009
I’m As Mad As Hell
by Burt Prelutsky
Frankly, I’m beginning to feel a lot like Howard Beale, the character portrayed by Peter Finch in the 1976 release, “Network.” He insisted that people get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick their heads out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
I’ve always heard that misery loves company. If true, misery in America has more company these days than it knows what do with.
I realize that conservatives have felt this way ever since the Democrats nominated the Chicago crony of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojevich and the assorted felons at ACORN, to be our president, but why aren’t millions of honest, decent, hard-working Democrats up in arms? I can guarantee that if a Republican president had done half the things that Obama has pulled off in his first half year, most of us on the right would be calling for his head. At the very least, none of us would be kissing his heinie.
Even before grabbing up car companies and banks, he got the ball rolling with a trillion dollar, 1100-page pork-filled stimulus package that had to be passed, he insisted, within a few short hours or America was going to be turned into a pumpkin. Well, without anyone having had time to read anything but the price tag, it was passed into law. Obama then took his own sweet time signing it. In the months since its passage, the unemployment rate has soared, entire states are going belly up and, apparently, nobody seems to know what happened to the money.
Then there’s the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, which started out in life at a thousand pages, and then had a 300-page amendment tacked on to it in the dead of night. It was as if Dr. Frankenstein, after carefully inspecting his nightmarish creation, decided that what the monster really needed was a second head and a hunchback. Again, nobody had time to read the bill, but that didn’t prevent 219 congressmen, including eight Republicans who scurried out from under a rock just long enough to make certain that Christmas, or perhaps I mean Ramadan, would come early for the President.
As I recall, when he was a candidate, Obama assured us that taxes would be decreased for 95% of all Americans. Inasmuch as the Heritage Foundation estimates that the cap and trade bill will wind up costing the average middle class taxpayer nearly $3,000 in additional energy costs, I guess a tax isn’t a tax if you don’t call it one. Of course Obama and Al Gore and their liberal lackeys don’t mention the jobs that people in the oil and coal industries will lose while we’re busily building windmills. Perhaps those folks who were formerly occupied supplying the wherewithal so that America could continue to be a major industrial nation can be hired to stand around and generate energy by blowing at the windmills.
Maybe what Obama meant when he claimed we’d be paying less in taxes was that we’d all be on the dole before the next election rolled around.
During the campaign, when Obama vowed that, if elected, he would create or save four million jobs, I speculated that he meant that if at some point there were four million Americans who were still working, he could say he’d kept his campaign promise. I swear I meant it as a joke.
Inasmuch as Obama seems to be doing all he can to turn America into a left-wing third world nation, it stands to reason that he was far more perturbed by a military coup in Honduras than by innocent blood being spilled in the streets after a rigged election in Iran.
It’s amazing, if you stop and think about it, that George H.W. Bush lost his bid for re-election because he was goofy enough to say, “Read my lips…no new taxes,” but Obama does his level best to bankrupt America and destroy the middle class, and yet continues to ride nearly as high in the popularity polls as Michael Jackson. Imagine if the man could moon walk.
But, I guess a lot of us who find ourselves going down the financial drain don’t really mind so long as we can watch Prince Obama and his princess holding hands on their $250,000 date night in New York City.
It’s almost enough to make a person pity Bernard Madoff. That poor shmuck got a 150-year prison sentence, and he only screwed Americans out of about 65 billion dollars.
Frankly, I’m beginning to feel a lot like Howard Beale, the character portrayed by Peter Finch in the 1976 release, “Network.” He insisted that people get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick their heads out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
I’ve always heard that misery loves company. If true, misery in America has more company these days than it knows what do with.
I realize that conservatives have felt this way ever since the Democrats nominated the Chicago crony of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojevich and the assorted felons at ACORN, to be our president, but why aren’t millions of honest, decent, hard-working Democrats up in arms? I can guarantee that if a Republican president had done half the things that Obama has pulled off in his first half year, most of us on the right would be calling for his head. At the very least, none of us would be kissing his heinie.
Even before grabbing up car companies and banks, he got the ball rolling with a trillion dollar, 1100-page pork-filled stimulus package that had to be passed, he insisted, within a few short hours or America was going to be turned into a pumpkin. Well, without anyone having had time to read anything but the price tag, it was passed into law. Obama then took his own sweet time signing it. In the months since its passage, the unemployment rate has soared, entire states are going belly up and, apparently, nobody seems to know what happened to the money.
Then there’s the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, which started out in life at a thousand pages, and then had a 300-page amendment tacked on to it in the dead of night. It was as if Dr. Frankenstein, after carefully inspecting his nightmarish creation, decided that what the monster really needed was a second head and a hunchback. Again, nobody had time to read the bill, but that didn’t prevent 219 congressmen, including eight Republicans who scurried out from under a rock just long enough to make certain that Christmas, or perhaps I mean Ramadan, would come early for the President.
As I recall, when he was a candidate, Obama assured us that taxes would be decreased for 95% of all Americans. Inasmuch as the Heritage Foundation estimates that the cap and trade bill will wind up costing the average middle class taxpayer nearly $3,000 in additional energy costs, I guess a tax isn’t a tax if you don’t call it one. Of course Obama and Al Gore and their liberal lackeys don’t mention the jobs that people in the oil and coal industries will lose while we’re busily building windmills. Perhaps those folks who were formerly occupied supplying the wherewithal so that America could continue to be a major industrial nation can be hired to stand around and generate energy by blowing at the windmills.
Maybe what Obama meant when he claimed we’d be paying less in taxes was that we’d all be on the dole before the next election rolled around.
During the campaign, when Obama vowed that, if elected, he would create or save four million jobs, I speculated that he meant that if at some point there were four million Americans who were still working, he could say he’d kept his campaign promise. I swear I meant it as a joke.
Inasmuch as Obama seems to be doing all he can to turn America into a left-wing third world nation, it stands to reason that he was far more perturbed by a military coup in Honduras than by innocent blood being spilled in the streets after a rigged election in Iran.
It’s amazing, if you stop and think about it, that George H.W. Bush lost his bid for re-election because he was goofy enough to say, “Read my lips…no new taxes,” but Obama does his level best to bankrupt America and destroy the middle class, and yet continues to ride nearly as high in the popularity polls as Michael Jackson. Imagine if the man could moon walk.
But, I guess a lot of us who find ourselves going down the financial drain don’t really mind so long as we can watch Prince Obama and his princess holding hands on their $250,000 date night in New York City.
It’s almost enough to make a person pity Bernard Madoff. That poor shmuck got a 150-year prison sentence, and he only screwed Americans out of about 65 billion dollars.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Some Townhalls Are Worse Than Others
by Burt Prelutsky
Recently, I had a very odd experience. No, I didn’t wake up 30 years younger and with a full head of hair. That would have been odd but nice, whereas the experience I actually had was merely bizarre.
Like most bloggers, I write for more than one website. It’s rather like being a syndicated columnist, except that little or no money changes hands. But, as a writer who hopes to influence public opinion, you want to have as many readers as possible.
The strange event took place on a Tuesday. It came in the form of an e-mail from Jonathan Garthwaite, who runs Townhall, a website I’ve contributed to for nearly four years.
The message read: “Dear Burt: As everyone is painfully aware, the economy is forcing companies to make difficult decisions. Townhall.com is no different. We take our commitment to our readers and our bottom line very seriously. Similarly, we are constantly reassessing our editorial lineup. We end up making tough decisions that aren’t always fun.
“I know it won’t please you to know that we’ve decided to discontinue carrying your column. It was not a decision make (sic) carelessly. Picking between colleagues, friends and talented writers is never easy.
“Thank you very much for sharing your insights with Townhall.com readers over the years. Sincerely, Jonathan.”
I must confess I was shocked to receive an electronic pink slip after all this time. I sent Garthwaite an e-mail asking which other writers were being made to walk the plank, but he said he wasn’t free to share that information. I did get him to agree to post a notice on the following Friday, lest readers simply assumed that I had died.
The reason I’m sharing this with you isn’t because I regard this as a case of blatant censorship. This isn’t the federal government silencing me. Townhall has every right to post or not post any writer for any reason. I don’t believe I or anyone else has the inalienable right to have his articles disseminated. There are many more important issues than whether or not a blog decides to cut me loose. Okay, I exaggerate. There aren’t many things more important, but there are, I’m almost certain, several that rival it.
That said, I fear that there are dark forces at play. You see, although there was the reference in Garthwaite’s e-mail to the weak economy and the bottom line, there had been no prior discussion between Townhall and me about money. At least not for quite a while. When I first started writing for them back in 2005, Townhall was paying me $35 for an article. But I was writing faster than they were posting, so they agreed to run two-a-week, and I agreed to lower the price to $20 each. And so it has remained.
But if they were cutting me loose over money, wouldn’t it have made more sense for them to suggest we revert to one-a-week or even ask me if I would write for less, even for free? Isn’t that usually how these things work?
Therefore, I think reasonable people can agree that money makes a very questionable motive in all this. And if I were popular enough with the readers to warrant Townhall’s posting two of my articles each and every week for all this time, lack of popularity wouldn’t appear to be the problem.
Now, understand, I am not the sort of person who readily subscribes to conspiracies. If anything, I tend to pooh-pooh them because I don’t believe two people can keep a secret, and I’m dead certain that three or more can’t. However, something about the timing couldn’t fail to grab my attention in much the same way that a mackerel lying under your pillow will certainly grab yours.
The piece that Townhall had posted on Monday of that week was an attack on our sworn enemies, which I had titled “The Straight Poop on Islam,” but which Townhall, in a fit of political correctness verging on insanity, had re-named “The Straight Talk on Islam.”
Perhaps it was sheer coincidence that the very next day, I was let go. Maybe the one thing had absolutely nothing to do with the other. Perhaps somewhere along the line, Cause and Effect had gone to Reno for a divorce and I just hadn’t heard about it.
But at least now you understand why I can’t help wondering if the folks at Townhall got an offer they couldn’t refuse -- perhaps a call from someone threatening to send them a ticking CAIR package.
Recently, I had a very odd experience. No, I didn’t wake up 30 years younger and with a full head of hair. That would have been odd but nice, whereas the experience I actually had was merely bizarre.
Like most bloggers, I write for more than one website. It’s rather like being a syndicated columnist, except that little or no money changes hands. But, as a writer who hopes to influence public opinion, you want to have as many readers as possible.
The strange event took place on a Tuesday. It came in the form of an e-mail from Jonathan Garthwaite, who runs Townhall, a website I’ve contributed to for nearly four years.
The message read: “Dear Burt: As everyone is painfully aware, the economy is forcing companies to make difficult decisions. Townhall.com is no different. We take our commitment to our readers and our bottom line very seriously. Similarly, we are constantly reassessing our editorial lineup. We end up making tough decisions that aren’t always fun.
“I know it won’t please you to know that we’ve decided to discontinue carrying your column. It was not a decision make (sic) carelessly. Picking between colleagues, friends and talented writers is never easy.
“Thank you very much for sharing your insights with Townhall.com readers over the years. Sincerely, Jonathan.”
I must confess I was shocked to receive an electronic pink slip after all this time. I sent Garthwaite an e-mail asking which other writers were being made to walk the plank, but he said he wasn’t free to share that information. I did get him to agree to post a notice on the following Friday, lest readers simply assumed that I had died.
The reason I’m sharing this with you isn’t because I regard this as a case of blatant censorship. This isn’t the federal government silencing me. Townhall has every right to post or not post any writer for any reason. I don’t believe I or anyone else has the inalienable right to have his articles disseminated. There are many more important issues than whether or not a blog decides to cut me loose. Okay, I exaggerate. There aren’t many things more important, but there are, I’m almost certain, several that rival it.
That said, I fear that there are dark forces at play. You see, although there was the reference in Garthwaite’s e-mail to the weak economy and the bottom line, there had been no prior discussion between Townhall and me about money. At least not for quite a while. When I first started writing for them back in 2005, Townhall was paying me $35 for an article. But I was writing faster than they were posting, so they agreed to run two-a-week, and I agreed to lower the price to $20 each. And so it has remained.
But if they were cutting me loose over money, wouldn’t it have made more sense for them to suggest we revert to one-a-week or even ask me if I would write for less, even for free? Isn’t that usually how these things work?
Therefore, I think reasonable people can agree that money makes a very questionable motive in all this. And if I were popular enough with the readers to warrant Townhall’s posting two of my articles each and every week for all this time, lack of popularity wouldn’t appear to be the problem.
Now, understand, I am not the sort of person who readily subscribes to conspiracies. If anything, I tend to pooh-pooh them because I don’t believe two people can keep a secret, and I’m dead certain that three or more can’t. However, something about the timing couldn’t fail to grab my attention in much the same way that a mackerel lying under your pillow will certainly grab yours.
The piece that Townhall had posted on Monday of that week was an attack on our sworn enemies, which I had titled “The Straight Poop on Islam,” but which Townhall, in a fit of political correctness verging on insanity, had re-named “The Straight Talk on Islam.”
Perhaps it was sheer coincidence that the very next day, I was let go. Maybe the one thing had absolutely nothing to do with the other. Perhaps somewhere along the line, Cause and Effect had gone to Reno for a divorce and I just hadn’t heard about it.
But at least now you understand why I can’t help wondering if the folks at Townhall got an offer they couldn’t refuse -- perhaps a call from someone threatening to send them a ticking CAIR package.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Obama Could Work For The New York Times
by Burt Prelutsky
Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which we were combating Islamic terrorists.
It’s enlightening to know that so far as the NY Times is concerned, censorship is not only moral, but mandatory, when the life of one of its employees might be at risk, but is not to be condoned when the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians might hang in the balance.
However, when it comes to hypocrisy, the Times isn’t alone. For instance, when George W. Bush fired eight U.S. attorneys, the outrage voiced by the media would have had you believe that he’d personally ripped the Constitution into a thousand tiny pieces. Compare that to the silence that greeted Obama’s dismissal of Inspector General Gerald Walpin. It had been Walpin’s responsibility to oversee government-subsidized volunteer programs, such as AmeriCorps. Walpin’s team of investigators discovered serious irregularities at St. Hope, a California non-profit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. It seems that an $850,000 grant, which was supposed to go towards tutoring Sacramento students and supporting theater and art programs, instead was used to pad staff salaries, meddle in a local school board election and pay AmeriCorps members to perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.
When Walpin recommended that Johnson, an assistant and St. Hope, itself, be cut off from federal funds, he was fired by the president. Did I mention that Mr. Johnson is a friend and was an early supporter of Barack Obama? I guess you can take the man out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the man. Not even when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
Some of us have been puzzled by the personal animosity that Obama has shown towards those, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who oppose his radical left-wing agenda. Clearly, the man is so narcissistic and thin-skinned that he can’t conceal his contempt for anyone who doesn’t openly adore him. I don’t entirely blame him, though. Like a little brat who is never disciplined by his parents when he misbehaves, Obama is the inevitable result of a media that has mollycoddled him ever since he came on the scene.
Frankly, I can’t figure out what it is that people find admirable about the president. I, myself, was profoundly upset that he couldn’t even muster up a few inspirational words for those brave souls in Tehran who were standing up to the murderous mullahs and their hand puppet, Ahmadinejad. But, on further reflection, it occurred to me that maybe he just didn’t want Americans to get any funny ideas about freedom and liberty.
In fact, I found myself wondering if the spark that ignited the demonstrations in Iran wasn’t supplied by the example of democracy taking hold in nearby Iraq, in much the same way that the French revolution was ignited by our own.
Some people have suggested that the reason Obama kept silent during the popular uprising is because he is a Muslim. The truth is, I have no idea how much he was influenced by his early years in Indonesia or by the wish to please his absentee Islamic father. I figure it’s bad enough that he calls himself a Christian, but attended a racist church for his entire adult life, spending a thousand Sundays listening to a creepy minister heap curses on Jews, white Christians and America. While I don’t know what the man believes in his heart, I do know that he would have heard the exact same message if he’d been kneeling on a prayer mat for all those years in a Baghdad mosque.
It appears to me that Obama is bent on destroying our economy, our military and our missile defense system; while, at the same time, he promotes socialized medicine, hires a racist attorney general and nominates a Supreme Court nominee who parrots the party line of La Raza. This is a man who brags about nonexistent Muslim accomplishments, while taking every opportunity to denigrate America’s character, her sacrifices and her awe-inspiring achievements.
Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city upon a hill. President Obama sees it as a slum that needs to be torn down as part of a massive reconstruction project.
If there were ever a site like Mt. Rushmore, dedicated not to heroic leaders, but rather to those who were unfaithful to their nation’s highest ideals, Barack Hussein Obama could take his rightful place alongside the likes of Vidkun Quisling, Henri Petain and Benedict Arnold.
Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which we were combating Islamic terrorists.
It’s enlightening to know that so far as the NY Times is concerned, censorship is not only moral, but mandatory, when the life of one of its employees might be at risk, but is not to be condoned when the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians might hang in the balance.
However, when it comes to hypocrisy, the Times isn’t alone. For instance, when George W. Bush fired eight U.S. attorneys, the outrage voiced by the media would have had you believe that he’d personally ripped the Constitution into a thousand tiny pieces. Compare that to the silence that greeted Obama’s dismissal of Inspector General Gerald Walpin. It had been Walpin’s responsibility to oversee government-subsidized volunteer programs, such as AmeriCorps. Walpin’s team of investigators discovered serious irregularities at St. Hope, a California non-profit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. It seems that an $850,000 grant, which was supposed to go towards tutoring Sacramento students and supporting theater and art programs, instead was used to pad staff salaries, meddle in a local school board election and pay AmeriCorps members to perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.
When Walpin recommended that Johnson, an assistant and St. Hope, itself, be cut off from federal funds, he was fired by the president. Did I mention that Mr. Johnson is a friend and was an early supporter of Barack Obama? I guess you can take the man out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the man. Not even when he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
Some of us have been puzzled by the personal animosity that Obama has shown towards those, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who oppose his radical left-wing agenda. Clearly, the man is so narcissistic and thin-skinned that he can’t conceal his contempt for anyone who doesn’t openly adore him. I don’t entirely blame him, though. Like a little brat who is never disciplined by his parents when he misbehaves, Obama is the inevitable result of a media that has mollycoddled him ever since he came on the scene.
Frankly, I can’t figure out what it is that people find admirable about the president. I, myself, was profoundly upset that he couldn’t even muster up a few inspirational words for those brave souls in Tehran who were standing up to the murderous mullahs and their hand puppet, Ahmadinejad. But, on further reflection, it occurred to me that maybe he just didn’t want Americans to get any funny ideas about freedom and liberty.
In fact, I found myself wondering if the spark that ignited the demonstrations in Iran wasn’t supplied by the example of democracy taking hold in nearby Iraq, in much the same way that the French revolution was ignited by our own.
Some people have suggested that the reason Obama kept silent during the popular uprising is because he is a Muslim. The truth is, I have no idea how much he was influenced by his early years in Indonesia or by the wish to please his absentee Islamic father. I figure it’s bad enough that he calls himself a Christian, but attended a racist church for his entire adult life, spending a thousand Sundays listening to a creepy minister heap curses on Jews, white Christians and America. While I don’t know what the man believes in his heart, I do know that he would have heard the exact same message if he’d been kneeling on a prayer mat for all those years in a Baghdad mosque.
It appears to me that Obama is bent on destroying our economy, our military and our missile defense system; while, at the same time, he promotes socialized medicine, hires a racist attorney general and nominates a Supreme Court nominee who parrots the party line of La Raza. This is a man who brags about nonexistent Muslim accomplishments, while taking every opportunity to denigrate America’s character, her sacrifices and her awe-inspiring achievements.
Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city upon a hill. President Obama sees it as a slum that needs to be torn down as part of a massive reconstruction project.
If there were ever a site like Mt. Rushmore, dedicated not to heroic leaders, but rather to those who were unfaithful to their nation’s highest ideals, Barack Hussein Obama could take his rightful place alongside the likes of Vidkun Quisling, Henri Petain and Benedict Arnold.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Trying To Make Sense Of Nonsense
by Burt Prelutsky
In case you were off on a different planet and hadn’t heard the news, Michael Jackson died. It was a tragedy. Not that this piece of human rubbish had died, but that the media, including Fox News, carried on as if it was a major loss to mankind.
This was, one, a man who had tried to turn himself, through weird chemicals and plastic surgery, into a white version of a black man and a male version of Diana Ross. Then, for good measure, he was a pedophile and a loon. But I guess if a person can moon walk, nothing else really matters. Frankly, though, his talent in dancing backwards didn’t seem like such a big deal. Unlike Ginger Rogers, who, as they used to say, could do everything Fred Astaire did, but do it backwards and in high heels, Jackson only managed to do it wearing a lady’s glove.
His death did strike home for me, though, the weekend after he died. I discovered that the $100,000-a-month mansion in which he died was just behind the home where I regularly play tennis. You would not believe the crowds that swarmed around the place, as if it was a sacred shrine. The scene would have warmed the hearts of pedophiles everywhere.
Jackson was sold to the world as Peter Pan, the little tyke who just never grew up. But, if Peter Pan had even faintly resembled this androgynous freak, Mr. and Mrs. Darling would have been brought up on charges for allowing their kids to accompany him to Never Never Land.
In a way, the entire sideshow was reminiscent of the grief displayed when Princess Di passed away in the distinguished company of an Arab playboy. But this was even worse because Lady Di was not a villainess, and these heartbroken shmoes were mainly Americans, not Brits, and could therefore vote in our elections.
Speaking of voting, there were only two surprises in the House vote for the insane Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Bill. The first surprise was that, in spite of Obama’s arm-twisting, 44 Democrats had a sufficient amount of nerve and integrity to oppose its passage. The other surprise was that eight Republicans voted for it. If even just four of them hadn’t sold out America along with their principles, it would have been voted down. The eight, for those of you keeping a list until the next election, were John McHugh (New York), Dave Reichart (Washington), Mark Kirk (Illinois), Mike Castle (Delaware), Mary Bono Mack (California) and, from New Jersey, Frank LoBiondo, Chris Smith and Leonard Lance.
One can’t help wondering what Obama offered to get the three Jerseyites on board. Perhaps it was the promise not to let the Justice Department go after the Mafia. All that we know for certain is that for those eight turncoats, the ® after their name stands for Rat.
Frankly, I’m not sure if I’m just being guilty of wishful thinking, but I have a hunch that while Obama is doing his best to destroy America and capitalism, the Lemming in Chief is leading the party faithful blindly off the cliff.
No matter how personally popular the President might be, and I am beginning to doubt those particular numbers, the same certainly can’t be said for his colleagues and cronies. The truth is, Pelosi and Reid are about as popular as mumps and chicken pox.
Even if the NY Times and Chris Matthews still get a tingle up their leg when they look at Obama, most Americans hate socialized medicine and cap and trade; they hate the idea of the feds being in bed with the unions and nationalizing banks and car companies; they hate the idea of dismantling our missile defense system at the very same time that Iran and North Korea are threatening us; they particularly hate the idea of our president going abroad and bad-mouthing America every chance he gets. Even Bill Clinton stopped doing that once he was past draft age and had gotten a haircut.
Unless I’m very much mistaken, those Democrats who are going along in order to get along are likely to discover next year that the voters are going to tell them in no uncertain words to move along.
In case you were off on a different planet and hadn’t heard the news, Michael Jackson died. It was a tragedy. Not that this piece of human rubbish had died, but that the media, including Fox News, carried on as if it was a major loss to mankind.
This was, one, a man who had tried to turn himself, through weird chemicals and plastic surgery, into a white version of a black man and a male version of Diana Ross. Then, for good measure, he was a pedophile and a loon. But I guess if a person can moon walk, nothing else really matters. Frankly, though, his talent in dancing backwards didn’t seem like such a big deal. Unlike Ginger Rogers, who, as they used to say, could do everything Fred Astaire did, but do it backwards and in high heels, Jackson only managed to do it wearing a lady’s glove.
His death did strike home for me, though, the weekend after he died. I discovered that the $100,000-a-month mansion in which he died was just behind the home where I regularly play tennis. You would not believe the crowds that swarmed around the place, as if it was a sacred shrine. The scene would have warmed the hearts of pedophiles everywhere.
Jackson was sold to the world as Peter Pan, the little tyke who just never grew up. But, if Peter Pan had even faintly resembled this androgynous freak, Mr. and Mrs. Darling would have been brought up on charges for allowing their kids to accompany him to Never Never Land.
In a way, the entire sideshow was reminiscent of the grief displayed when Princess Di passed away in the distinguished company of an Arab playboy. But this was even worse because Lady Di was not a villainess, and these heartbroken shmoes were mainly Americans, not Brits, and could therefore vote in our elections.
Speaking of voting, there were only two surprises in the House vote for the insane Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Bill. The first surprise was that, in spite of Obama’s arm-twisting, 44 Democrats had a sufficient amount of nerve and integrity to oppose its passage. The other surprise was that eight Republicans voted for it. If even just four of them hadn’t sold out America along with their principles, it would have been voted down. The eight, for those of you keeping a list until the next election, were John McHugh (New York), Dave Reichart (Washington), Mark Kirk (Illinois), Mike Castle (Delaware), Mary Bono Mack (California) and, from New Jersey, Frank LoBiondo, Chris Smith and Leonard Lance.
One can’t help wondering what Obama offered to get the three Jerseyites on board. Perhaps it was the promise not to let the Justice Department go after the Mafia. All that we know for certain is that for those eight turncoats, the ® after their name stands for Rat.
Frankly, I’m not sure if I’m just being guilty of wishful thinking, but I have a hunch that while Obama is doing his best to destroy America and capitalism, the Lemming in Chief is leading the party faithful blindly off the cliff.
No matter how personally popular the President might be, and I am beginning to doubt those particular numbers, the same certainly can’t be said for his colleagues and cronies. The truth is, Pelosi and Reid are about as popular as mumps and chicken pox.
Even if the NY Times and Chris Matthews still get a tingle up their leg when they look at Obama, most Americans hate socialized medicine and cap and trade; they hate the idea of the feds being in bed with the unions and nationalizing banks and car companies; they hate the idea of dismantling our missile defense system at the very same time that Iran and North Korea are threatening us; they particularly hate the idea of our president going abroad and bad-mouthing America every chance he gets. Even Bill Clinton stopped doing that once he was past draft age and had gotten a haircut.
Unless I’m very much mistaken, those Democrats who are going along in order to get along are likely to discover next year that the voters are going to tell them in no uncertain words to move along.
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