Monday, May 7, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky
Several centuries ago, Vlad III, the king of Romania, was so notorious for his cruelty that he singlehandedly put his birthplace, Transylvania, on the map and was nicknamed the Impaler for his preferred means of torture and execution. Years later, he served as the model for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, thus providing everyone from Bela Lugosi to George Hamilton with a handsome livelihood.
In his own way, Barack Obama reminds me of Vlad. For one thing, he is merciless when it comes to his enemies. And he regards anyone who is not a friend, aka a contributor to his war chest, as an enemy. In his latest crackdown on freedom-loving Americans, he pushed through a piece of legislation known as HR 347, which makes it a felony to stage a protest against Obama in any venue where the Secret Service is present. As it only applies to American citizens, I believe that the defrauded hookers would have been free to show up outside the Colombian hotel, carrying placards reading “Secret Service Agents Unfair to Working Girls.”
The reason that HR 347 is so important to Obama is because it’s so important to his campaign that he deliver the subliminal message that he’s unbeatable. He knows that people like to back a winner and so long as he can successfully limit his public appearances to events at which he addresses college students, union members and blacks, he’s convinced that voters will ignore unemployment rates, a soaring deficit and gas prices. And here, I thought I was cynical!
On the other hand, you can’t really blame the guy. I mean, if he didn’t carefully limit his venues and banish his critics, can you imagine the catcalls that would greet him? It would be even worse than the stuff that Alex Rodriguez hears when he’s in the batter’s box at Boston’s Fenway Park.
David Axelrod, who unfortunately looks and sounds like Central Casting’s idea of a political fixer went on Chris Wallace’s Sunday show recently and had the gall to pooh-pooh the notion that, after lambasting rich people for not paying their fair share, Obama, who paid a mere 20% of his income to the IRS, should have considered paying something extra.
It makes you wonder if anyone in this administration ever considered that an obvious alternative to constantly lecturing the rest of us is to lead by example. I mean, I would consider anyone an idiot who, of his own volition sent more money than legally required to the buffoons in Washington, but I would certainly think about doing so if I had just spent six months bugging other rich people to pay more. Better an idiot, I say, than a hypocrite. Of course in Obama’s case, it’s never a case of either/or.
Speaking of income taxes, where do the 50% of Americans who pay nothing in income taxes -- some of whom actually collect a “refund” -- get off whining about other people not paying their fair share? Only in Obama’s America would anyone even suggest that people who are lucky enough to call the United States home shouldn’t pay even a plugged nickel for that unique privilege.
For sheer gall, though, it’s hard to beat our own Impaler-in-Chief. For instance, Obama, who reminded all of us that Trayvon Martin looked just like the son he never had, uttered nary a word about the more recent event that took place in Midway, Florida, where two black teenagers, who also happened to resemble Obama, dragged a 50-year-old white man from his automobile and bashed his head in with a hammer. Midway, it so happens is just six miles down the road from the now world-famous Sanford, Florida, so even Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton probably wouldn’t have gotten lost if they’d decided to take their traveling circus over there and demand that justice be meted out.
That leads me to wonder why Michelle Obama, who seems to care so much about what kids, generally white kids, are eating, seems to have such a cavalier attitude towards young blacks raping, robbing and killing; generally other black people, as it so happens.
Perhaps it’s just me, but wouldn’t you think that our first black First Lady would be far more concerned with the fact that the areas, aside from basketball and obscene rapping, in which black Americans excel, are illiteracy, unwed mothers and violent crime, and perhaps a little bit less concerned with counting calories?
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.
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