The American Spectator

As July slipped away, the 2012 Olympic Games began in London with a four-hour opening ceremony that included the Queen wearing a very tasteful hat and thousands of the Games’ participants—including participants in the equestrian events, though not their horses. The horses will probably be saved for the next Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where participants will, for the first time, include tiddlywinks flippers and shoppers at Walmart. In years to come, car bombers, fashioners of Improvised Explosive De vices (IEDs), and airplane hijackers may be included in the Olympic events. This year’s games woefully underrepresented pietists from Holy Islam.

Good news for President Barack Obama in this election year! The economy grew at only 1.5 percent in the second quarter, down from 2 percent in the first quarter and from 4.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. In his efforts to create a truly green economy our president is making dramatic progress. During our most recent comparable recession, 1981–1982, President Ronald Reagan presided over an expansion, which at this stage of recovery had increased GDP by 18.5 percent versus Mr. Obama’s more sensible 6.4 percent, and he keeps whooping it up. In Roanoke, Virginia, he declared to a delirious crowd:

If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something—there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If your were successful, somebody along the line gave you help….Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made it happen.

Our president is casting his net toward the moron vote. In the Prague Zoo, a gorilla died after hanging itself with a climbing rope. Zoo officials insist the death was accidental, but who knows what goes on in the head of a gorilla? By the end of July, both the Gallup and Rasmussen polls found Mr. Mitt Romney ahead of the president. Furthermore, AmSpec’s private polling is predicting a rout on November 6 of such colossal proportions that Democrats will be asked to turn in their guns.

Apparently the Occupy Wall Street movement that the left-wing press told us would become a mass movement this past spring and would by autumn decide the direction of American politics for a generation has changed course. It has divided into guerrilla bands, and in an upstate New York library an Occupier by the name of Mr. Anthony Parri was arrested for removing a young girl’s shoe in the children’s reading room of the Penfield Library and rubbing the girl’s foot against his nose and mouth before police were able to apprehend him. It was Mr. Parri’s second interaction of the day with a young girl. He was arraigned on charges of sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a child amidst his continual chants of, “I am being set up by President Barack Obama and the city and federal government”—a catchy rhythmic cadence apparently devised by Mr. Parri himself. He is being held without bail, if any Spectator reader feels a generous impulse. Gendarmes entered the chateau of Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy in the early hours of July 3 as part of an inquiry into financial irregularities. They found no sexual toys or contraband, but then his wife was not at home. And on a sad note, readers of this column may have seen the last of the ravishingly handsome Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn. His wife is inexplicably leaving him. Miss Anne Sinclair stood by him through all the charges of philandering, rape, and eating disorders, but now she is saying au revoir. Possibly she finds him boring.

The delayed Arab Spring continues to wreak havoc in Syria, and in Bali, Indonesia, a rude species of justice has been served. In a remote village, an 18-year-old boy who was caught fornicating with a cow by local peeping toms has been forced to marry it before a gathering of village yokels. Yet the lascivious beast will not be doing much housework or even cooking. Despite the boy’s protests that the cow wooed him into thinking she was a beautiful woman, village offi cials decided to drown the beast. They did not even leave the poor chap with a picture or a clipping of the cow’s tail. AmSpec will have one less source for the “Current Wisdom” department. Mr. Alexander Cock burn (pronounced COE-burn) is dead. He died of natural causes. In New York City, Mr. Alec Baldwin married Miss Hilaria Thomas, the illustrious yoga instructor—and while on the subject of yoga, here is a sobering report from Mumbai, India. The fat members of the Laughing Yoga Club of Mumbai have been ordered to desist from their idiotic Shrieking at 6 a.m. under the window of Mr. Vinayak Shirsat, 78, a confirmed agelast. Whether Miss Thomas is a member of the Laughing Yoga Club it is too early to tell. We shall see how things go with her and the famously humorless Mr. Baldwin. In religious news, Islamists badly damaged a 15th-century mosque in Timbuktu, Mali, for theological reasons, and the mystery of Goat Man has been cleared up. A man wearing a goat costume and reported to be disporting with a herd of wild goats in the mountains of northern Utah has indignantly denied that he is an extreme wildlife enthusiast or was practicing some weird sexual deviancies. The man—as yet unidentified—has called Mr. Phil Douglass of the celebrated Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and assured him that he is a normal American who was trying out his goat costume in preparation for slaughtering the quadrupeds during the upcoming archery season. Nothing unseemly happened.

In gun news Mr. Dale Whitmell of Wawa, Ontario, nearly blew his head off while trying to stomp a mouse with the butt of his gun. He will be okay, but the mouse was a mess. In Shan dong, China, a specially trained team of 18 policemen sent to save a drowning woman has instead fished a voluptuous sex doll out of the drink. A 1,000-strong crowd gathered to watch but was disappointed by the outcome, and some ladies were quite properly embarrassed. No one knows who made off with the sex doll. Finally, in Oregon the green movement has gone too far. In Portland, a 40-year-old man who attempted to wash his private parts in a park drinking fountain was whisked from public view by the police and booked for misuse of a drinking fountain, indecent exposure, and disorderly conduct. Whether he will be free to vote for President Obama on Nov ember 6 has yet to be determined. The American Civil Liberties Union is obviously on its way. Yet our president goes about his business with his usual panache. On July 20 he formally commemorated the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, stating that “Ramadan reminds us that Islam is part of the fabric of our nation, and that— from public service to business, from health care and science to the arts—Muslim Americans help strengthen our country and enrich our lives”—though possibly not in the area of Obamacare where abortion is sacred.