As April bid
adieu, and our 44th
president continued to swank across the country and around the
globe, it began to appear that he is not so much conducting a
presidency in the conventional sense as a world tour. His travels
took him to Europe, the Middle East, Mexico, and the Caribbee.
Abroad, he sounded his basic theme that America had been a failed
state until he, the Prophet, rose up from the 4th Aldermanic Ward
of Chicago to bring Good Government to Amerika. At home, his theme
is that the last three decades of unparalleled economic growth were
a hallucination. He will replace the hallucination with European
social democracy, using as his economic model the U.S. Postal
Service or possibly an ant colony.
While traveling in Europe his rock star aura
was so enravishing that when President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife, Mme.
Carla Bruni, met him at the economic summit in Strasbourg she broke
with protocol. The former model and songstress chastely extended
her hand to our president rather than accept his kiss, which could
have left her sexually aroused, panting uncontrollably and
heaving wildly, her hair mussed, mascara running, nostrils
flared. She perspires! She wails! President Sarkozy is very
embarrassed. His wife is swaying rhythmically under the Prophet’s
gaze—all this is what ran through the agitated minds of the
American press as Mme. Bruni withdrew her tender hand. In the
presence of our 44th president our journalists’
imaginations—especially those of the ladies—are highly susceptible.
Time magazine has put this greenhorn on its cover 14 times
in a year, Newsweek 12 times, and People’s “100
Most Beautiful People” issue included seven utterly ordinary faces
from “the president’s inner circle who are turning heads in D.C.”
Turning heads indeed—the seven included White House chef Mr. Sam
Kass, whose mouth extends from the bottom of his left ear to the
bottom of his right ear, and the president’s “personal aide,” Mr.
Reggie Love. Like Mr. Kass, Mr. Love is completely bald.
Yet back to the Prophet’s world tour. In the
Caribbee he exchanged pleasantries with Cuba’s president Raul
Castro. Our president also accepted a Spanish version of the
famously anti-American tract Open Veins of Latin
America from the semi-literate Venezuelan strongman President
Hugo Chavez, though it is not clear that our president knew what
was in the book. He cannot read Spanish and possibly thought
President Chavez was giving him the Austrian version of Open
Veins. After all, in Europe the Prophet had expressed his
belief that the official language of Austria is Austrian. To Mr.
Obama Austrian probably looks pretty much like Spanish, or maybe he
thought Mr. Chavez was giving him the Venezuelan translation of the
book. Our president’s teleprompter was no help, and frankly he
appeared a bit out of his depth to everyone save the American press
corps, whose members do not know Austrian from Venezuelan
either.
Back in
America, the Prophet detailed his
vision of the new American economy during a speech at Georgetown
University, where he incongruously invoked the Sermon on the Mount
after his aides prevailed on the administrators of the country’s
first Catholic university to conceal the religious symbols behind
his speaking area. The Prophet asked no more of Catholic Georgetown
than he asked of himself. In his speech he never mentioned the
author of the Sermon on the Mount, the late Nazarene whose views on
several of the Ten Commandments have fallen into disfavor among the
Prophet Obama’s supporters, particularly those in the transsexual
community. In Stretford, England, footballers from Chorlton Villa
beat International Manchester 6 to 4, though one of the winning
team’s players was penalized for distracting a penalty kicker by
expelling gas.
In Switzerland the crime wave continues, with
Swiss police utterly flummoxed in their effort to thwart twin
brothers who continue to accumulate hundreds of parking tickets
with impunity. The brothers, Harold and Michael Lengen, ages 38 and
38 respectively, park their car, a late-model vehicle in which they
have joint ownership, in unauthorized parking spots, collect a
ticket, and then either Michael, aged 38, or Harold, aged 38,
appears in court and insists that on the day that the ticket was
issued the other brother, aged 38, was behind the wheel. Swiss
authorities are stumped. By the end of the month there was still no
resolution of that dreadful row caused by the BBC’s Miss Clare
Balding when she joked about the dental ruins in the mouth of Mr.
Liam Treadwell, the 23-year-old jockey who had just won the Grand
National. While interviewing Mr. Treadwell on live TV, Miss Balding
said, “Give us a big grin to the camera.” After Mr. Treadwell
offered only a tight-lipped smile, the BBC interviewer importuned,
“No, no—let us see your teeth.” When the wretch assented, she
joked, “He hasn’t got the best teeth in the world but you can
afford to go and get them done now if you like.” Ha, ha, ha—well,
Miss Balding, you have an embarrassing last name! And let us see
your hairpiece, you jackanapes!
In celebrity news, Mr. Phil Spector was
convicted of second-degree murder. Mr. Spector is the legendary
rock music producer who invented for 1960s rock groups the “Wall of
Sound” after spending years listening to the sound of latrines
flushing in public comfort stations. He could spend as many as 18
years in prison without his wig. There is no word as to
the deposition of his navel lint collection. That auction of more
than 1,000 items from the home of Mr. Michael Jackson was called
off on April 15, possibly owing to public health concerns, and
death claimed the life of Mr. Randy Cain, a founding member of the
Delfonics, a word that has no known meaning in any modern language
but might have been used by Cro-Magnon man back in the Paleolithic
Era, a period that is apparently the beau ideal for
Americans of the Green persuasion. Mr. Cain was 63 at the time of
his death, 10 years short of the average life expectancy for an
American male, but not bad for a Delfonic. Finally, as we go to
press there is still no word as to the cause of the death of former
porn star and Ivory Snow detergent girl Miss Marilyn Chambers. She
was found defunct at her Canyon Country, California, mobile home.
Miss Chambers was 56, precisely 21 years short of the average life
expectancy for an American female. It is tough to be a celebrity in
Amerika.
The Obama administration moved vigorously on
the international front, following up on North Korea’s unethical
launch of a missile. The Pentagon will cut $1.4 billion from the
Obama missile defense budget, and if that does not put an end to
North Korea’s provocations the Prophet will cut another billion.
Further, the president declared an arms-control campaign to reduce
atomic weaponry globally. Yet even after that show of good faith
the administration is faced with global threats. In
Nottinghamshire, an English businessman, Mr. Joe Weston-Webb, has
set up a 30-footlong catapult rigged to fire sacks of chicken feces
in all directions. Originally Mr. Weston-Webb devised the catapult
in the mid-1970s to launch his wife, Mary, across the nearby River
Avon. Repeated efforts failed, however, and in fact Mary still
lives with him and has devised less arduous ways to cross the
river. The catapult is based on an earlier Roman design. So the
Obama administration could have difficulty negotiating with Mr.
Weston-Webb. Few members of the administration speak Latin, or
rather, Roman.
