Last Fall Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote of Barack Obama, “…he’s imperfect, his ears stick out, he smokes, he’s written about wrestling with pot, booze, and maybe a little blow as a young man”.

Weeks later Obama confronted Dowd over, of all things, her comments about his ears!

“I just want to put you on notice…I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.”

Terrific, the next leader of the free world’s greatest concern is a taunt about his ears.  We have a child running for president.

Revisionists have been protecting Obama by explaining his words with Dowd were only jest in kind, and I would say it is probably advantageous to overlook the absurd and give him the benefit of the doubt.

The charges that Obama is an inexperienced neophyte are probably way overblown.

Since then, however, absurdity has been a permanent fixture of his campaign: 

In his bid for president Obama has visited all 57 States, with only one or two to go.

Tornadoes in Kansas have killed 10,000 Americans.

Barack Obama was born in 1961, a result of his parents coming together due the Selma march of 1965.

On Memorial Day, Obama thanked all of the dead people in his audience as he remembered their sacrifice.

Obama’s grandfather helped liberate the Jews at Auschwitz but Obama’s uncle wasn’t Russian and it was the Russian’s who liberated Auschwitz.

In Sioux Falls, S.D. Obama declared, “Thank you, Sioux City…I’ve been in Iowa for too long.”

On Afghanistan, Obama lamented, “We only have a certain number of them (translators), and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.”   Of course the languages in Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish and the Afghanis speak Farsi and or other non-Arabic languages.

On Iran, “…they don’t pose a serious threat to us…tiny countries with a small defense budget can’t do us harm”.

On Venezuela, “No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum” complaining President Bush policies were responsible for elevating Chavez to his position as despot of Venezuela even though Chavez came to power during the Clinton Administration in 1998.

While the media has skewered McCain for being an out of touch old man unable to even use a computer, Obama proclaimed, “We don’t have the technical capacity to create something like that” about a doctored video promoting Obama’s campaign any twelve year old with an Apple computer could make.  Turns out the video was created by a firm hired by Obama’s campaign.

Discussing enemies Obama said, “…it’s not just terrorists or just Hezbollah or just Hamas, it’s also cynicism.”  Just think if we weren’t so damn cynical those planes would have never knocked down our buildings on 9/11.

In Dreams of My Father, Obama writes about a story in Life Magazine that influenced him, about a black man trying to bleach his skin white, but no article in Life magazine was ever published.

While the main stream media goes on and on bestowing Obama with adoration for his impeccable oratory skills, chastising McCain as Bush part 2, Obama had this to say:

“What they’ll say is it’ll cost too much money, but you know what, it will cost, about, it it will cost, about the same as what we would spend it, o over the course of ten years, it will cost what it will cost us, it, hah hah, all right, O.K., we’re going to, it will cost us about the same as what it will cost for abooout, hold on one second, I can’t hear myself, a but I’m glad you’re fired up out there, I’m glad…”

Bush sounds downright intelligent after that.

A gaffe master is one thing, but on flip-flopping, Obama is no piker either:

After opposing the government’s eavesdropping program giving legal immunity to telecommunications companies he now supports it.

On a questionnaire asking about gun control Obama answered yes to the following questions:

Do you support state legislation to:

a. ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns? Yes.

b. ban assault weapons? Yes.

c. mandatory waiting periods and background checks? Yes.

After the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia’s gun ban, Obama said he favors an individual’s right to own a gun.

Obama rejected public financing for the general election after earlier promises to accept it.

When the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for child rapists he lamented the decision even though he has been steadfastly against capital punishment.

Obama proclaimed he was against NAFTA, but now he supports it.

As a legislator concerned over Palestinian suffering Obama addressed the Israeli lobby with so much enthusiasm you’d thought he was about to convert to Judaism.

The flag pin Obama called a substitute for real patriotism and refused to wear he now proudly sports on his suits.

Obama’s flip-flops are not flip-flops and his gaffes are not gaffes, these are just little details that shallow people focus on while this exciting Renaissance man ventures to give us all “real change”, and why the main stream media doesn’t burden us with these silly facts.

If we elect John McCain for president, we’ll never get that thousand bucks a piece from oil company profits and we’ll never be able to realize all we had to do to avoid this energy crisis was tune up our cars and fill our tires with air.

Obama is really not as dumb as evidenced by his repeated speaking errors; he is just much more interested in style than substance.  Facts are a ridiculous nuisance for a guy when he’s got such important history to make by being America’s first black president. 

I am looking forward to his inaugural address where the “coolest” “rock-star” Commander-In–Chief  we’ve ever had wows us all by doing a fly-by around the newly repainted “Black House” and lands softly at the podium using nothing but those big ears for the flight.

 

Copyright 2007 Jim Pontillo