If This Be Treason, Let's Par-Tay !

Oh boy, this is gonna be fun. A comedienne named Wanda Sykes -- who had to give up her regular gig at the Moline, Illinois Red Roof Inn breakfast room for the occasion -- acted as "mistress of ceremonies" for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner the other night, and, standing two heartbeats from the prez himself, called Rush Limbaugh a "traitor" and a terrorist for opposing Obama's programs. OK -- get ready for a tsunami from the "dittoheads", who, undoubtedly, outnumber Sykes' fan base by about 1000 to 1. And also get ready for... but we already have it! "Comments" from the White House, that is. And they were -- well, there weren't any, at least not from Mr. O himself. I imagine that, already, on some instinctive level, Obama is thinking -- let's see, there were nearly 60 million votes for McCain, and despite Limbaugh's opposition to McCain, there couldn't possibly have been fewer than, oh, 25 million Limbaugh fans among the McCain voters... so this bit... I mean, "lady", has just called 25 million Americans "traitors", for all intents and purposes. Way to go, "uniting the country"-wise. (Of course, Janet Napolitano has already gotten non-fired for calling all of our returning service personnel "potential terrorists", so maybe he wasn't actually all that upset... )

Now, to be fair, Sykes also took a well-deserved shot at Dick Cheney, and some at least semi-deserved shots at lesser lights... and at Obama himself. (But she had nothing but good things to say about Michelle's arms. Do we really want to go there?) In any case, the next sound you hear (or have already heard) will be Rushbo thundering across the airwaves in indignation -- and I'm 100% on this side on this one, especially since I imagine Sykes was just helping to soften up the battlefield for the resuscitation of the Fairness Doctrine. I don't know about you, but I'm glad to be living at a time when the culture wars are being fought right out in the open, instead of just in academic journals... even though the real issues are still banished from public discourse. At least it's a start. Plus, it also exposes -- as if it needed any more exposure -- the utter lameness of the Obama administration. In addition to "no comment" from the president, a "presidential spokesman" said "I don’t know how guests get booked... that’s a White House Correspondents' Association thing." EXCUSE ME?? Has the Secret Service signed off on that cop-out? What if Sykes had turned out to be a terrorist? For that matter, what if she'd only turned out to be an "angry white male"? I don't believe this for an instant. No one gets within shoe-throwing distance of the president without the Secret Service having their entire rap sheet in hand. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that her comments had been thoroughly "vetted" with the White House prior to the dinner -- maybe to the same idiot who arranged that flyover photo op that terrorized lower Manhattan.

You know, it's too bad in a way when an administration sets up such easy targets. Don't they ever learn from human disaster areas like Joycelyn Elders and James Watt? I mean, Obama could have picked respectable economists and non-tax evaders to head up his recovery team, but "noooo", he had to provide a juicy array of low-hanging fruit for his critics. He could have hired someone other than Janet Napolitano, who appears to be a reincarnation of Janet Reno, but "noooo". Or how about just firing the people who keep humiliating him and his administration? But I guess that would be kind of like starting over from scratch. And in the meantime, Rush is having a field day, just like when the Clintons were in the White House, except without the sleazy soap-opera angle. And when you're "the last man standing", as Rush styles himself, you're going to get called some names. But he's a big man (amen!); he can take it. But they're getting themselves further into his trap every time they screw up this way. So -- let the good times roll while they may!