Monday, November 19, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky
When you realize how many political careers and reputations have been destroyed because of sex scandals over the past several years, it’s truly mind-boggling. David Petraeus is just the latest in a long line that goes back at least as far as John Kennedy and includes the likes of Gary Hart, Bob Packwood, Wilbur Mills, Ted Kennedy, Mark Sanford, Anthony Weiner, John Edwards and Bill Clinton. Frankly, it’s a wonder that any of these guys ever got any work done.
It’s probably not that much of a shock when you consider that most politicians were formerly lawyers. And if it’s true that the ranks of dentists and psychiatrists are filled with would-be doctors who found they couldn’t stand the sight of blood, it’s probably fair to assume that politicians were lawyers who couldn’t stand the thought of working for a living.
But I think the bigger message we can take away from the rise and fall of Mr. Petraeus is that we would all do well to stop making heroes out of people we don’t really know. It’s bad enough when teenagers glom onto entertainers and athletes, but at least one can hope they’ll eventually grow out of wanting to emulate the likes of Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Michael Vick and Lance Armstrong.
There’s nothing wrong with admiring someone’s accomplishments, but if you’re looking for heroes, you should probably start looking closer to home. Find people whose honesty and character you’re actually in a position to vouch for. Maybe it’s your mom or dad, perhaps even a sibling. If you’re fortunate enough, you might even see one in your mirror.
Just keep in mind that just about everyone you see in the movies, on TV, in the stadium or arena or read about in newspapers and magazines, has a publicity person on salary whose job is to promote their image. Nobody ever hired a flack to make them look bad. Therefore, when you read about some famous person who finally gets caught misbehaving, it’s safe to assume you don’t know the half of it.
In the aftermath of the election, it has occurred to me that it is foolish to discuss the Catholic vote. When you realize that Obama received the bulk of Hispanic votes in spite of his endorsement of abortion and same-sex marriages, and his war on the Church over birth control pills for Church employees, it’s obvious that religion is a goofy basis upon which to base their identity. It’s just as foolish as believing that religion plays any role in the way that Jews vote. The fact of the matter is that the huge majority of orthodox Jews vote for conservatives. It’s secular Jews who overwhelmingly support liberal candidates. But pollsters continue to group them together and to then refer to the Jewish vote as if it’s monolithic and has anything to do with Judaism.
My jocular response to nutty people who have suggested that I should run for president is that I would except for the dress code. As one who has grown accustomed to running around in tennis shorts, sneakers and Hawaiian shirts, I wouldn’t even consider taking a job that required me to wear a suit and tie. Still and all, I’ll admit that I didn’t like seeing Obama or Romney, for that matter, campaigning in their shirtsleeves. If I had known that a suit and tie were now optional, I just might have thrown my baseball cap in the ring.
If I’m not mistaken, the slide in decorum began, not too surprisingly, with Bill Clinton. Before him, about the most embarrassing things that occurred during presidential campaigns, was seeing the candidates don Indian war bonnets, kissing babies and chowing down on such ethnic, vote-getting, delicacies as pizzas, strudel and knishes. While it’s true that Nixon, generally the stodgiest of politicians, went on Laugh-In and in a futile attempt to seem like a regular guy, said “Sock it to me!” it took Clinton going on MTV and telling the world whether he wore jockey shorts or boxers to place the presidential limbo pole at ground level. Monica Lewinsky was merely the inevitable result of electing the horny oaf to the highest office in the land.
Therefore, it was no big surprise to see Obama during the campaign popping up to chitchat with the tawdry likes of Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Lazaro Mendez, the radio host who bills himself as the Pimp with a Limp.
Speaking of he who should be back in Chicago, it’s not certain, as I sit here, whether Barack Obama will nominate U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to replace Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. My question, though, is: How is it that Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Mrs. Clinton and now, possibly, Ms. Rice, have all been deemed fit for the job?
Just when was it decided that a position that had been held by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryan, George Marshall and John Foster Dulles, would become nothing more than the final rung on the ladder of affirmative action?
In 20 short years, it’s gone from being a tough job for tough-minded people to being a really bad joke. Sort of like the presidency, itself, now that I think of it.
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Monday, November 12, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky
The next presidential election is just four short years away. It seemed like just yesterday that we Republicans envisioned a future of Romney, Ryan and Rubio. Now we have to wonder if we were too quick to laugh when Joe Biden said that this wouldn’t be his last hurrah, and that he would be on the ballot next time. These days, that seems all too possible. After all, if the majority of Americans don’t object to his being a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, why would they object to his actually having the heart that some other Vice President would be monitoring on a daily, if not hourly, basis?
After all, Biden will only be 73 when Obama vacates the White House. No doubt he will have even more hair and whiter teeth by then. Because the Republican Party will have gone the way of the Whigs and the Bull Moose, his only real worry will be whether Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton, who will be 69, but only 10 or 11 in dog years, decides to take him on.
If I’m still around, I’ll probably even vote for him. For one thing, he couldn’t possibly be worse than Obama. For another, I’ll never forget that he recently stated, “There’s never been a day in the last four years that I’ve been proud to be his Vice President.” That sort of candor should be rewarded.
It is a mystery to me, and one that will never be solved to my satisfaction, how it is that the majority of Americans can see what is happening in Greece and still continue to vote for left-wing ideologues like Barack Obama, who subscribe to the belief that the money that the government prints is every bit as good as the money that people earn. The closest I have come to generating a theory is that most people fail to see what is happening in Greece because they’re too busy watching really dumb shows on TV, and couldn’t find Greece on a map even if you printed “Athens” in really big letters.
I regret to admit that I come from a family of Democrats. Being secular Jews who were born in Russia, my parents seemed to suffer from the delusion common to a great many Jews that it was FDR, not Moses, who brought the tablets down from Mount Sinai. It helps explain why so many non-religious Jews regard it as a semi-sacred duty to vote for liberals.
I was so mistaken about the recent election that I actually believed that when the utility workers from Alabama who had come north to New Jersey in order to help the state restore power, and were turned away by the union thugs who demanded that they join the union or go home, it would open the eyes of the voters to how vile Obama’s public sector allies really are. But no such luck.
Aside from the fact that a lot of decent people are left to suffer without electricity, one of the truly despicable things about all this is that these blue collar union guys, who don’t give a damn about anything but saving all the work and overtime for themselves, are the very same schmucks who rail at the guys at the Stock Exchange for being greedy. Perhaps they are, although I have always found it peculiar that greed invariably seems to be a sin that only applies to other people, but at least no 80-year-old is going without heat and light because of those nogootniks on Wall Street.
I was reminded of the newspaper strike that took place in New York City in 1962-63. It killed off several newspapers, costing thousands of newsmen their livelihoods. By the time it ended, the papers had lost $100 million in sales and advertising, while the workers had lost $50 million in wages. But the union leaders were happy. So far as they were concerned, the other side had eventually caved, their own jobs were secure, and that’s all that really mattered.
Those at least were private sector unions. As such things are measured, it was a fair fight. It cost both sides. But in the intervening 50 years, we have seen public sector unions spring up. When these palookas negotiate, it’s with politicians. Therefore, the only side that loses is the one that never has a seat at the table: the taxpayers. The unions get whatever they ask for in terms of salary and pensions, and the politicians get the promise of campaign donations and campaign volunteers. And, most pathetic of all, because these groups include such sacred cows as cops, firemen and teachers, the poor suckers who are being financially bled to death are reluctant to object.
Finally, I’ve been thinking about our military. It seems to me that going back as far as Korea, it has been America’s policy, no matter who happens to be the president, to do everything in our power not to win wars. Apparently, it’s a carryover from the liberal belief that competition is a bad thing and that when kids play games, scores should not be kept, lest the losers wind up feeling like losers.
At some point, Americans began to look at our soldiers and, instead of seeing warriors, began to see Boy Scouts and Brownies. I first became aware of that during Desert Storm when I began reading editorials stating that something needed to be done and done quickly because the chocolate bars being issued to our soldiers were melting in the summer heat of Iraq and Kuwait.
The next thing I knew, Major Hasan was free to murder several Americans at his leisure because it had been decided that an army base, Fort Hood, would be a gun-free zone, except of course, for Muslim jihadists. Fortunately, a pistol-packing policewoman was in the neighborhood and she finally brought him down, ending the bloodbath that came to be referred to by this administration as workplace violence.
Frankly, inasmuch as our military has been singularly devoted for the past few decades to fighting and dying on behalf of one set of Muslims under attack by another equally vile set, I don’t see any real need to maintain a military.
The money saved could be used to pay down the national debt, but I suspect that America’s favorite fun couple would prefer to spend it on White House galas and exotic vacations.
And judging by the recent election, the American voter, who might well turn out to be Time magazine’s Simpleton of the Year, wouldn’t have it any other way.
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