Thursday, April 21, 2011

Scurrying to the Comfort of the Class Room

His Facebook "lecture" has taken on the look of his campaign stops: backed up by unquestioning admirers applauding his every phrase.  The Lecturing Administration never notes the poor results the pupils get on their quizzi.  Mid Terms? Uhh...Professor: I do conclude that you and your "Faculty" booted those more certainly than did Sarah Palin of the Katie Couric question "What Papers and Magazines do you Read?"

No longer expecting an intelligent review from the Party: the DNC IS Obama & Company.  Shows you, though, doesn't it, that Women who supported Hillary Clinton had totally lost their sense of humor.  Each pundit reference to HRC as the "Wife" or Mother or cranky, demanding Female Authority Figure was meant to be a white flag of surrender to the "Inevitable" President. 

We can now laugh at ourselves for the failure of the Wimminz to just find the boys mildly amusing, send them back to their football games, their garages and their action movies while we took over the Country's reigns. 

Majority United can still get it together.  This is funny.  Not tragic, but actually eye-opening reason to smile understandingly and take this burden of leadership off the shoulders of our Kids' Elementary School Principal.  The JOB at hand demands hearty stock: the level of commitment to "love" that takes us through the nine months of gestation, delivery and post-partum recovery. 

They weren't demeaning us: they were actually floating a "We Trust You to Kick Our Ass When We Need It" stroke of conditional surrender.  We are supposed to be intuitive, sense rather than see it outright.  If that were the criteria, any man could figure it out.  We were operating from a leadership "style" that conducts a campaign via the young, hormone-driven political professionals who bring high energy and ambition to their political jobs. 

It is not amusing to recognize that the Obama / Plouffe strategy is to appeal to the young, to mislead the inexperienced and to energize the Face Book Nation to twist their parents' arms again to get them to endorse, fund and elect him.  He is pitting the Kids against the Folks with much the same technique a Professsor would use in a College Classroom: your "grade" is mine to accord you contingent upon the deference you accord me over the duration of the semester.  So there you have it:  Obama surrounds himself with "Students" who failed to read their History and are now permitted to register in the School of Hard Knocks.  Unlike Jack Kennedy who owned a Classics infused mind, or like Bill Clinton who possessed the intellect of a dominating gamesman, honed in the Governors' Mansion over two terms interrupted by a commuppance, the President / Guest Lecturer has been forced - by Egalitarian Fairness of the Fourth Estate, to rotate out those seats in the Press Box to non-adoring, scrutinizing, assignment performing/submitting scholars building carreers rather than sucking up for the "A."

A good grade in the Obama / Plouffe Classroom viewed from the wider, long-term angle of the Graduate School of Reality and Life In The Big City isn't enough to get it done.  Sure - Dad's going to give them the money to register, but when those grades - protected from the bill payers by the Registrar's Office Student Privacy rules drop them out, it's not, now or ever, DAD'S responsibility.   Except in the sense that the failed college kid is now Mom & Dad's for the forseeable future. 

When Professor Obama appeals to his classes for unqualified loyalty, to "get in the faces" of any who question his analysis and to demand the Affirmative Action President be nurtured and encouraged by the Know Betters in the supporting roles around him, he is saying to the WOMEN of this Country that the only thing that matters in this entire experience is his PRETTY FACE!!!  He now wants to be the FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT, having supplanted the first Black President.  He now wants this game he's acquired to become the game of the 2012 Campaign.  Don't worry about Leading: just look pretty.  We can take care of everything.  We don't want you to break a nail.  We will lavish you with gifts, squire you to the finest restaurants and provide you with the wardrobe, transportation and entertainment that shows the world you're special.  You are Daddy's Little Girl and anybody who challenges that will answer to Daddy....which makes you want to ask the President / Princess:  "Who's Your Daddy?"

We ask, not out of disrespect:  it matters only until we assess whether we can take him or not, thus determining our next move.  I saw that working the door at the Clark Bar with Barry Bonds after a Pirate Game in the early Nineties.  Bonds, Bonilla and the rest of the team were in the private party room celebrating a team mate's birthday the day I was "Guest Bouncer" at the post-game celebration.  My mentors, Jeff & Marty, had prepped me to know what to look for as fans came in.  My manager, the Boss who had given the O.K. knew us from the Steel Gym and was gratified that hiring bouncers who weren't big, heavy handed bruizers of the dubious wit, but rather, obviously trained, strong men who did the work of lifting and nutrition training, remaining sober and alert at the Gate.

When I took up my perch at the entrance to the Clark Bar that Fourth of July weekend, I expected Jeff to face me and we would carry off the post-afternoon game duties without a challenge...until Bonds emerged from the party room wearing his "Gold's Gym" shirt and gold chains, bracelets and diamond earrings.  It was "my day!"  and here was Barry Bonds, MLB Star, millionaire and legacy, crowding my debut!  I had won my opportunity via the hard grind of opening the gym at 6:00 a.m every weekday, then going off to my regular job after which I returned to the gym for my own work-out.  Ah! The "life" of sacrifice and intent.  So here was BARRY BONDS "guesting" on my other stool, blowing the minds of the fans entering the post-game celebration.  WTF?  wasn't in the lexicon back then, but that's what they were thinking; trust me.  Bonds, who was a shit to Pittsburgh Fans and who arrogantly ignored the promotion efforts made by the Pittsburgh Baseball Club and Manager Jim Leyland, who brushed off auto-graph seekers and who NEVER delivered in the playoffs, now talking about how much money he'd command on the open market when he became a free agent and that the 'Burgh was the LAST team he'd "perform" for.

Surprised but not really; I saw this for what it was ... the standard bullshit I got from the guys I worked with at the Pirates' ticket office.  This wasn't about the money, not about the respect, not even about the Game or the Girls who wanted to get into the game.  This was a flat-out crude guy, as low class as Darryl Strawberry or Dock Ellis, thinking that everybody lived by the code of the 'hood, and preferred to see a guy - ANY guy, occupying the seat wherever one existed.  Offering his seat to a Lady was the ultimate proof that the guy had her under his thumb, that she would never notice his limitations as long as he first  withheld it from her forcibly, then made a gallant show of "offering" it to her.  Unbeknownst to her, the gesture was a show, for his buddies, cooked up in the back room for their solicitous amusement in the Eddie Haskell tradition.  They KNOW I can and do kick their ass.  They know that they owe their stardom to my indulgence of their "boy" behavior and they HOPE that game will never end. 

So, relax, guys.  I know the game.  I give you the choice:  spend all your time monitoring MY moves and horning, crowding, forcing yourselves into the space I've earned, or get something YOU can't have...which brings us to my next post...

To Be Continued...

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