The New Neo

Did you ever notice how often Obama uses the word “silly” to describe questions he doesn’t want to answer and issues he doesn’t want to address?

It’s an interesting ploy, a way to escape being pinned down while attempting to avoid charges of evasion. He could answer, of course. But he doesn’t want to waste his time on “silliness” because he, Obama, has a higher calling.

But this is not condescending. Not in the least.

Elitism? It’s a silly charge that “amuses” him. After all, it can’t be true because—he was raised by a single mom and was once on food stamps! He went to school on a scholarship, and took out student loans!! These things no doubt automatically act as early inoculations that confer lifelong immunity against the disease of elitism.

And, what’s more, Obama and his wife had the arduous experience of living “for the first 13 years of our marriage up until three years ago in a three-bedroom condo without a garage so if you live in Chicago that means you’re scraping ice every morning.”

It’s not exactly Lincolnesque on the hardship scale, nor is it equal to walking twenty miles in the snow on bleeding feet. But I suppose a three-bedroom apartment is really roughing it these days—compared to Obama’s (non-elitist) digs now, the house he purchased three years ago for which the couple paid a cool two million.

I don’t begrudge Obama and his wife their success or their home. He and his family have every right to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. But to claim solidarity with the downtrodden of the earth because a young couple with two excellent careers and salaries has to scrape ice off a car (even in Chicago) is hogwash. I might even be inclined to call it “silly.”

And, since I seem to be in a “Julius Caesar” mode today, I offer an update of Mark Antony’s funeral oration from Shakespeare’s play of that name (with appropriate gender-neutral PC additions):

Friends, voters, countrymen and women, lend me your ears;
I come to critique Barack, not to praise him.
The evil that men and women do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their campaign;
So let it be with Barack. The noble Hil’ray
Hath told you Barack was elitist:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And dismissively hath Barack answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Hil’ray and the rest –
For Hil’ray is an honourable man or woman;
So are they all, all honourable men or women (except for the honourable transgendered)-
Come I to speak in Barack’s campaign.
He is your friend, faithful and just to you:
But Hir’ray says he is elitist;
And Hil’ray is an honourable man or woman.
He hath bought many condos as his homes
Whose garages were nowhere to be seen:
Did this in Barack seem elitist?
When that the poor have cried, Barack hath wept:
Elitism should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Hil’ray says he is elitist;
And Hil’ray is an honourable man or woman.
You all did see that on his campaign tour
His followers did reach epiphany,
Which he would joke about: was this elitist?
Yet Hil’ray says he is elitist;
And, sure, she is an honourable man or woman.
I speak not to disprove what Hil’ray spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to vote for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men and women have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart’s in Indiana there with Barack,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

And here’s Marlon Brando, of all people, performing the speech in its original form, complete with fake British accent: