Millennial Panic

Jon Stewart has announced that he will be leaving The Daily Show later this year ... see:Entertainment Weekly Story. Millennials are in a full-blown panic ... where then will they get their news?

Perhaps, maybe Jon Stewart will take over for Brian Williams?

Sleepwalking to Our Perdition

I am more and more verklempt that the American public … and its increasing dissatisfaction with the Obama administration … are becoming irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. We protest and Obama plays pool … lifting a middle finger to our angst as irrelevant.

Our fearless leader cares not a wit about the mare’s nest that he (and Hildebeest and the Botox boy) have created with our foreign policy … nor his administration’s cacophony of corruption interrupting our domestic tranquility. He reads his Teleprompter li[n]es completely assured that this absolves him from any responsibility for these problems. He is not the trouble … it is the do-nothing Congress … or the tea party … or Darrell Issa … or Rush Limbaugh … or the Supreme Court … or those mean Israelis.

“There is not one smidgen of corruption at the IRS. Al Qaida is on the run.  Bin Laden is dead and G.M is alive. The Affordable Care Act will bend our healthcare costs down. Just wait [until after 2016]!” We are a nation of pajama-boys whose concerns are not to be concerning to Barry.

After all David Letterman will joke with him at the drop of a bad pun … and Slick Willy will defend Obama’s many screw-ups with his folksy delivery … and the New York Times is still in his corner fanning him with its ticky-tacky towel … and Jon Stewart will give America’s youth the straight liberal skinny … and most of Hollywood will write him big checks. Obama’s only rationale and salvation is, “I won.”

And the searing flames and the stink of hell’s sulfur are the only things that possibly might interrupt the damning somnambulance of America’s media mindset. But somehow I doubt it ... admitting that one was wrong is a feast not savored.

Sticks and Stones

Recently I have been using diminutives to describe President Obama …“puerile,”  “child President” and “toddler President.” This was mostly because of his infantile way of dealing with our many exploding world crises.  But recently our “leader of the free world” has been validating these appellatives by using language more fitting for kindergarten recess taunts. Yesterday he called Senator Paul Ryan’s proposed budget a “stinkburger” to the cheers of the assembled academia … see: Washington Post Story.

I guess that such a mocking tone has become popular with American slope-heads because of “The Daily Show” and Jon Stewart’s emotive imitation of a news anchorman.  Now President Obama, not to be outdone by this comedian, is also emulating such a hammish form of expression. I suppose that this is the way he best communicates with the base of the Democrat party … but it is unlikely that this elevates his stature among anyone who uses a napkin and eats with a fork.

I cringe when I hear the resident of our White House debase himself with such childish and boorish expressions. What is next? Is he going to call Rand Paul a “poo-poo head?”

Afterward: Jonah Goldberg has a similar take on this same talk by President Obama at the University of Michigan ... calling it a stand-up routine ... see: New York Post Op Ed. The word that comes to mind for me to describe this presidential schtick is "snide." And ruminating on this description reminds me of many other similar modern-day comedians: David Letterman, Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart (already mentioned), and now the suggested replacement for Letterman, Chelsea Handler (see: The Wrap Story) ... some crueler than others. I conclude that Obama may have discovered a new career for himself once he leaves the White House ...

Fun in the Sun

President Obama is on top of things. Despite the Ukraine being squeezed to death by the Russian bear, serious delays in Syria destroying its chemical-weapon stockpiles, and 239 Malaysian airline passengers apparently being blown to smithereens by terrorists, he is deeply involved. He has called Vladimir Putin of Russia two times for long conversations. How do we know this? Because we see pictures of him on the telephone. And he is also talking to many world leaders about these many crises. How do we know this? His administration says so in a brief talking point … see: The Hill Story. 

Not to mention his plethora of serious domestic issues: the Obamacare sigh-up deadline rapidly approaching, the President’s budget proposal being dead-on-arrival in Congress, the administration’s gutting of our military, little or no White House attention to tax reform, our continued national economic lethargy, etc.  Is Obama concerned with all these domestic failings? It must be so … for there is no wringing of hands on the nightly news.

So all must be roses … for our President is hitting the links once again in Key Largo in sunny south Florida.  This time his playing partners are a former basketball great, Valerie Jarrett’s cousin, and a former football star. Why isn’t he in the White House Situation Room with his key advisers mapping out administration actions to all these issues?  Beats me. I guess fun in the sun trumps the serious business of governing … particularly after all that nasty cold weather in Washington.

Yes, President Obama is on vacation again … just two months after an extended three week stint in Hawaii.  In fact, he is on vacation so often that he hardly has time for all his many Democrat fund-raising trips. Do the U.S. ever-alert media make a point of highlighting these derelictions of duty (see: AWOL)? Do we ever hear a tsk-tsk from his many cable-news sycophants? Does Saturday Night Live run stinging parodies about his lack of focus on world and domestic events?  Does an arm-waving Jon Stewart on the Daily Show mock this inattention?  Get serious!  It’s a wonder that we even know he is playing golf in Florida.

And I do ponder what message this sends to Putin?

Transference

Sigmund Freud identified an interesting twist in the spectrum of human emotions which he labeled “transference.”  This was the tendency of those being psychoanalyzed to view their psychoanalysts as all-knowing and all-seeing … and thus an object of veneration (frequently falling in love with them.)

Siggy baby had it right … but he didn’t nearly go far enough.  It seems that our society today engages in a wide variety of illogical transference-like emotions.  We view successful investors (such as Warren Buffet) as super-experts in taxing policy.  We view movie stars (such as Sean Penn) as super-experts on international relations.  We view pop singers (such as  Madonna) as super-experts on child-raising.  We view comedians (such as Jon Stewart) as super-experts in news commentary.  We view the spouses of legislators (such as Clair McCaskill) as super-experts on law-making. 

And we view consummate politicians (you pick your favorite) as super-experts in governance.  (I guess I have also to add that we view successful venture capitalists as super-experts in politics.)

Saturday Night Dead

Lorne Michaels's Saturday night "comedy" show (Saturday Night Live or SNL) has had quite an impact on Presidential elections.  Effectively it killed Gerald Ford's prospects in 1977 when Chevy Chase continually depected him as a clumsy, bumbling fool.  (Side note: my wife worked part-time at NBC during this period and it was generally understood that Chevy Chase was an arrogant a-hole.)  Then, in the 2008 election, Tina Fey went a long way in destroying John McCain's campaign with her depiction of Sarah Palin as a provincial boob (excuse the expression) with "I can see Russia from my front porch."  (Many voters actually believed that the Alaskan Rogue Elephant had said that ... she hadn't.)

Now, that Mitt Romney seems to have wrapped up the Republican nomination, can we now expect that lefty hatchetman, Mr. Michaels, to try once again to enter the voting booths across the country in November and pull the levers by proxy for The Barry?  The answer is, of course.  The real question is, how will he do this?  My prediction is that it will be by either pointing out Mitt's seeming stiffness, his putting his dog's crate on the roof of his car, or his "ruthlessness" as a 1%-er while running Bain capital.  Maybe ... and probably ... all three ... possibly even some others too.  Also expect the "comedy" writers on The Late Show, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to do much of the same ... often with a sly vengence.

Wouldn't it be great if somehow Dave Letterman, Lorne Michaels, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart could also be continuously and savagely rediculed on network and cable television?  Unfortunately, it will only happen in my dreams ...