Columnist.
Recently, Jon Stewart found himself in the unenviable position of having people questioning whether or not he's a racist. The truth is, he had nobody to blame but himself because, employing an accent unheard since the days of "Amos 'n' Andy," he mocked Herman Cain. I'm proud to say that I wasn't one of those who questioned him. That's because I believed the answer was self-evident. He's a liberal, after all. Therefore, he promotes affirmative action, proving that, like the political party to which he pledges allegiance, he regards blacks as mentally inferior, incapable of competing academically with Caucasians and Asians. If that's not racism, what is?
Occasionally, I find myself wondering why liberals are so terrified of the Second Amendment. After all, even though most criminals are Democrats, they don't exclusively target Republicans. Liberals are just as likely to be mugged and to have their homes invaded, so why is it that this great divide exists between the Right and the Left on the issue of gun ownership? I have come to suspect it's because liberals realize that in a saner society, we would be encouraged to hunt them for their pelts.
A recent study disclosed that 47% of Detroit's residents are functionally illiterate, which suggests that 53 % are just acting uppity. The fact that so many Americans have only a passing acquaintanceship with the English language, in spite of the fact that $13,000 is the amount spent annually to educate each Detroit student, is an indictment of public education in America. That sum happens to be a few thousand dollars over the national average, so the pathetic reality can't be attributed to a lack of money. That such widespread illiteracy exists in a major American city is a testament to the power and gall of the teachers union and to their shameless cohorts in the Democratic Party.
There are two groups of Americans I'm having a tough time understanding. One of them consists of the sexually eccentric, the other is made up of the elderly. Because we have been inundated with pro-gay propaganda for so many years that if you say the least little thing that goes against the grain, that questions the claim that gays make the best friends, are the nicest people and are the very best possible parents any child could have, you are labeled a homophobe.
Although I try to maintain a self-imposed schedule of writing three articles a week, sometimes even that's not often enough to keep up with newsworthy events. For instance, Anthony Weiner is long gone from Congress, but now I'm worrying about where he'll turn up next. I mean, one day Eliot Spitzer was the disgraced governor of New York, but did he go into hiding? He did not. The next day, he was co-hosting a TV show. One day, Van Jones, a self-identified Communist, was a disgraced White House czar, and the next day he had an appointment as a "distinguished visiting fellow" at Princeton. Charley Rangel was a disgraced congressman one day, and, well, a disgraced congressman the next.
I have often admitted that I could never handle being president. Aside from the dress code that requires suit and tie even if you're only taking out the trash, I simply lack the patience. I'm afraid I'd spend all my time muttering things like "But I don't want to meet with Nancy Pelosi. There's something spooky about an old woman who not only wears her hair like a four-year-old, but sounds like a four-year-old. She's like something out of a Stephen King novel" or "I don't give a hoot what the Supreme Court says. For God's sake, those clowns wear their bathrobes to work. Who do they think they are? Hugh Hefner?" But a job I'd be even less able to carry off is Press Secretary. I can't even imagine what it's like being Jay Carney and having to go out every day and tell lies or provide alibis for the boss. If I had to do that much spinning, I'd fall down before I reached the microphone.
I always find it amusing when Americans look down their noses at the English royals, as so many did on the occasion of Prince William's recent marriage to Kate Middleton. We Yanks can trumpet our democratic ways all we like, but at the end of the day it's all so much idle chatter. We have our own form of royalty, but unlike England's, where the lineage goes back centuries and where they usually know how to carry it off with some dignity and panache, we're stuck with brain-addled actors, brain-fried rock stars, felonious athletes and the Obamas.
In case you haven't caught on yet, I can't wait for the next election to roll around. It's less than 500 days off, but with Barack Obama in the White House and Michelle and her relatives jetting around the world on our dime -- or, rather, our millions of dimes -- it feels more like 500 years. Because we didn't celebrate Christmas in my Jewish home, I wasn't one of those kids who counted off the days until December 25. The closest I ever came to that sort of excruciating anticipation was when I was in grammar school and summer vacation was on the horizon. I would start scratching off weeks, days, hours and finally minutes, in my notebook.
Recently, it occurred to me that liberals regard the federal government as a huge non-profit organization. It's the same way that normal people look at the Red Cross or groups dedicated to eradicating dread diseases. Those on the Left believe it's up to the government to eliminate poverty by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. It's known as the Robin Hood theory of economics.
During the Spanish Civil War and, later, during World War II, there was a great deal of talk about fifth columnists. It was a reference to traitors, to those people in one's own country who provided propaganda or even more overt assistance to the enemy. It does not, but might just as well, refer to the columnists for the New York Times. I have no idea why the term has been retired. In the days of the big war, there were only a minority of German, Italian and Japanese-Americans, who were disloyal to the U.S., whereas today, motion picture and TV studios, editorial boardrooms, the halls of Congress and the Oval Office, are full of Americans who are actively working against the best interests of their country and who obviously regard the Constitution as a terrible waste of parchment.
As you all know, I will support any Republican -- and I mean absolutely any Republican -- who winds up running against Obama. That even includes the mastermind who came up with RomneyCare and who subscribes to the myth of global warming. Nobody, and that probably includes any other Democrat, could be as bad for America as the guy who managed to turn "community organizer" into a term of contempt that rivals "used car salesman," "medical quack," "ambulance chaser," "hooker," "pimp" and "congressman."
The other day, I heard a conservative talk show host insist that, with the 2012 presidential election looming on the horizon, it would behoove Republicans to stop referring to Obama and his enablers in the House and Senate as socialists. Instead, he advised, we should focus on the fiscal policies that are leading the nation to the verge of bankruptcy. I, on the other hand, say if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, and pushes a socialist agenda, it's a socialist duck. What was it but socialism when Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and their left-wing cohorts, insisted that no-down-payment home loans be made to folks with no money, a policy that inevitably led to our own financial catastrophe?
When it comes to economic matters, I'm not ashamed to admit that I know next to nothing. The reason I'm not ashamed to make that confession is because I realize that I share this failing with Barack Obama, all the Democrats in Congress, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke. Part of my problem is that the Stock Market, which is supposed to be a major indicator of America's fiscal condition, always reminds me of that roomful of monkeys who, theoretically, given enough time just might write "Hamlet." I don't know the basis for that odd notion, but I think it far likelier that they'd eat a lot bananas and make a big mess. Sort of the way that liberals do.
I wonder how Democrats manage to keep track of their talking points when Obama keeps yakking out of both sides of his mouth. For openers, he's changed his tune from 2008 about shutting down Gitmo; raising the debt limit; getting us out of Afghanistan faster than you can say Afghanistan; a transparent and post-racial administration; military tribunals; and even the Patriot Act, for heaven's sake. So, while some people suspect that Obama will dump Joe Biden in favor of Hillary Clinton in 2012, Obama's people are rumored to have sent out feelers to George W. Bush.
As my more faithful readers know, I would never be confused with Pollyanna, even if I donned a pinafore and carried a parasol. But, just as confident as I was that John McCain, thanks to his own pathetic campaign and the economy's coming down with a severe case of the vapors a month before the election, would lose to Barack Obama, that's how confident I am that Obama is moving back to Chicago in January, 2013. Unlike Dick Morris, who told Bill O'Reilly that Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina would easily defeat Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer here in California, I knew no Republican had a chance in a statewide election. Come to think of it, I often wish I had the same opportunities to win steak dinners from Morris that O'Reilly has. I'd never have to pay for another meal. In fact, sometimes, I wonder if Morris is reading tealeaves or smoking them.
No doubt a great number of people were confused when just a few days after he suggested that Israel should return to its 1967 borders and then treated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time in as many visits as if he were a plague carrier, the Jews at the AIPAC conference gave Obama a series of standing ovations. Apparently it was enough for these buffoons that Obama had mentioned those indefensible borders in the same sentence as "swaps." Although Obama has never suggested what it is that the Palestinians are supposed to swap in exchange for Israel's committing geographical suicide -- a skate key, a couple of falafels, a Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card? -- it was enough that Obama pretended to be even-handed.
Because I've just finished reading my friend, Ben Shapiro's excellent new expose, "Primetime Propaganda," I'm reminded how fortunate I am that during most of the time I was writing for television, I was a Democrat. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have had a TV career at all. As Shapiro points out, TV has grown increasingly liberal over the past 50 years. Although he is only 27 years old, he has been diligent in his historical research. Moreover, because he is young, Jewish and wore his Harvard Law baseball cap when he interviewed the writers, producers and network executives, who have created the product and scheduled the programming over the years, they all assumed he was, like them, a devout leftist.
Years ago, a globe-trotter named Robert Ripley made a handsome living with a comic strip and a series of popular movie shorts called "Believe It or Not." It was Ripley's brainstorm that Americans would be fascinated by such oddities as people who grew their fingernails three-feet long, subsisted on a diet of bugs or constructed their homes out of ox dung. If nothing else, Ripley let us know that our relatives weren't really the daffiest folks on earth. These days, political correctness generally prevents us from shining a spotlight on the weird customs and disgusting habits of the various freaks who share the planet with us. To get around those inhibitions, let us consider this an homage to the late Mr. Ripley.
I am not overly surprised when the majority of American Jews continue to support Obama, but I know it confounds Christians. What they fail to grasp is that Israel's survival is not only a low priority item for the president, but for a great many Jews. My fellow Jews, by and large, are far more connected to liberalism than they are to Judaism, far less familiar with the Talmud than with "Dreams of My Father" or "The Audacity of Hope." The more religious a Jew is, the more likely he is to be a political conservative and to be concerned with Israel's security.
If it should come to pass that Herman Cain, who is over the age of 35, is a natural-born American and is twice as black as Barack Obama, wins the Republican nomination, it will be fascinating to see if any liberals -- black or white -- will be able to restrain themselves from calling him an oreo or an Uncle Tom. Taken as a group, there are probably no more courageous or principled people in America than black conservatives. Whether your name is Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, Ward Connerly, Allen West or Herman Cain, you know that nine out of 10 of your relatives regard you as something of a white sheep. You also know that, in spite of everything you believe, speak or write, nine out of 10 of your relatives will regularly go out and vote for the likes of Barbara Lee, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee and Jesse Jackson, Jr.
