Excuse This!

It is becoming harder, even for the most deluded liberals, to maintain that Obama’s charm offensive – directed first at Clintonites, and now at Republicans -- is a skillful strategy for “change,” undertaken by a progressive super-hero capable of putting the Forces of Darkness to work in behalf of Truth, Justice and (a sanitized and humane version of) the American Way. What super-hero would stoop to dine with such a motley band of pompous pseudo-thinkers as George Will, William Kristol, David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer? Lex Luther is one thing, but a super-hero has standards.

Then there’s the hullabaloo about to descend upon those of us living in the Belly of the Monster. Despite some well-publicized efforts to include the hoi polloi who put Obama in office, the inauguration will hardly be “a festival of the oppressed” such as has always accompanied genuinely transformative moments. As inaugurations always are, it will be a festival of the over-dressed, tripping the light fantastic in obscenely glamorous “balls” (while the moral equivalent of Rome burning takes place everywhere outside). Evidently, Obamamaniacs are so dense or deluded or both that they somehow don’t find this offensive.

There are better ways to celebrate the swearing in of our first African American President, and to rejoice in the fact that our “one President at a time” is no longer a criminal of historical dimensions: rallies against institutional racism, for example, or to demand that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld et. al. be brought to justice. There will be some of that, but far too little; and watch what little there is get co-opted into the Obamamaniacal frenzy.

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What does it say of liberals that they are not appalled by the stench of sanctity attaching to the inaugural events? To counter a spate of bad PR and as a sop to his high-minded admirers, Obama, at the last moment, invited Gene Robinson, the gay Bishop (of the splintering Episcopalian Church), to pray at an inauguration event. It’s the least he could do after inviting Rick Warren, a homophobic (and anti-abortion) mega-church evangelist to deliver the invocation. But in a country that rightly prides itself on “separating” church and state, what business do any of these snake oil salesmen have there at all? The same goes for Joseph Lowery’s benediction. Invite him, of course, for the Martin Luther King reference, and have him speak as much as he wants. But the least Obama could do is dispense with his “blessing.” It’s bad enough that he will be sworn in on a Book of Holy Writ. That Honest Abe took the oath on the same tome changes nothing.

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Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton slouches towards confirmation – amidst a chorus of praise from Democratic Senators and liberal commentators. As I wrote months ago, Mamie Eisenhower had better qualifications, if only because she had a better husband to learn from. But regardless of her very dubious, though highly trumpeted, fitness (or lack thereof) for office, the tragedy is that she’ll be bringing back with her all those Kissinger wannabes like Dennis Ross and Richard Holbrooke. The even greater tragedy is that, compared to the miscreants they’ll replace, this actually will be a change for the better. It’s almost reason enough to join the liberals as they praise the Lord for giving them a leader who, whether they realize it or not, will soon be passing the ammunition down Afghanistan way, and writing up yet another blank check for the ethnic cleansers of the Promised Land.