Less Sports and Entertainment

Less Sports and Entertainment: More Hard News

Classic literature is being rewritten during the second decade of the 21st Century. Ancient myths are being recast. Centuries old folk tales are becoming sources of parody. More recent screen plays are given new twists.

Consider, for example, the myth of King Midas. In the original concept, everything the king touched turned to gold.

Today, the king is Barack Obama. Unlike King Midas, however, everything he touches does not turn to gold. Just the opposite occurs. Everything he touches turns to disaster. Obamacare to the VA scandal, and everything in between like the IRS and Benghazi scandals, are best described as disasters.

The growing scope of the VA fraud, inefficiency, and an absence or lack of treatment of needy veterans began to paint this as the worst of the Obama scandals.

To shift public attention away from this debacle, the King or President decided he would show his undying love and commitment to service personnel and veterans by bringing missing soldier Bowe Bergdahl home from Taliban captivity.

The ploy worked. Attention shifted immediately from the VA to the idiocy of releasing the five scariest prisoners from GITMO. The attention, however, was not what Obama expected. Instead of getting accolades over his commitment to military personnel and veterans, this gamble is considered the worst disaster of them all.

The outrage is coming from both Democrats and Republicans. Even the liberal, left leaning press is throwing brick bats toward the White House over this one. Aggravating the debacle even more is the claim that when Obama released the GITMO prisoners without giving Congress 30 days notice, he broke a law that he had signed.

Changing myths like that of King Midas spawned the parodying of folk tales.

Pinocchio’s nose that began growing in 1883 every time he told a lie is one being parodied. The liberal “Washington Post,” for example, developed a Pinocchio cartoon head for assigning to public lies. Depending on the severity, a lie can earn one, two, three, or four Pinocchios.

So far, the lies about Obamacare lead the list of four Pinocchio awards. When, however, the full stories of Berghdahl and the scandals at the VA becomes known, Obamacare may fall to a distant third place.

The 18th Century folk tale of Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and not being put back together by all the King’s horses and all the King’s men is also coming into play.

Every time the Obama Administration finds itself in another ignominious failure, White House personnel rush out to assure us that the President knew nothing about the debacle until he heard it on the local news.

Consequently, the buck never gets to the White House. Instead, one of the King’s Men has to take the blame and try to put the broken pieces back together.

Lois Lerner takes the Fifth in a House Committee hearing and then “retires” in an attempt to put the broken IRS piece back in place. Then Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, resigns to reduce the heat so the glue to hold the broken Obamacare piece in place can harden.

Finally, Secretary Of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, resigns to relieve the pressure on Obama trying to hold the pieces together.

The most blatant example of blaming others for the broken pieces is found in the VA scandal. Obama claims that he became aware of the circumstances from recent news reports. Unfortunately for him, however, there are video clips of his pontificating about the problem and how he will fix it during his 2008 campaigning.

None of these efforts worked to put the broken presidency of Obama back together. They did not work, in part, because unlike competent leaders, President Obama claims to have known nothing about the growing scandals until he heard it on the news.

Compare those side steps to the news clips broadcast repeatedly on June 6, the 70th anniversary of D-Day, of General Eisenhower penning a statement before the invasion that, if the operation failed, it was his fault. That was an act expected of every great King, President, CEO, or leader of any type.

Conversely, the White House has nurtured its own worst enemy in several of these disasters. The enemy in these cases is Susan Rice, a trusted advisor of the President.

First, she was sent out to tell the world that Benghazi was a spontaneous reaction to an American produced video blasphemous of Mohammed. Although this was known to be untrue, she regurgitated it numerous times.

Now, in aggravation of the sincere bi-partisan concern over the swap of Bowe Bergdahl for five committed terrorists, she repeats on several TV shows that Bergdalh, who may be charged with desertion in combat, a capital offense, served honorably.

So here’s the perspective.

The most serious disaster of this Administration has not yet been mentioned. The worst tragedy is that, after all this, over 40% of Americans contacted in some polls think that Obama is doing a good job.

That suggests a need to reword part of a modern screen play. There is a song in “My Fair Lady” about the abuse of the English language. Professor Higgins sings about English being misused or abused in England and elsewhere. He laments,

“The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.

“There are even places where English completely disappears.

“Well, in America they haven't used it for years….

“Why can't the English learn to speak?”

Those lyrics should be revised to sing about the need for Americans to learn about news other than in the sports and entertainment sections.

enough

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