Have A Great Summer! Keep In Touch!

I enjoy that my president--you know, the one with all the melanin--is a man of his word, even when his word is stupid.

There are people that we know, maybe not from work that we see every day, but whose acquaintances we make and remake in passing and generally under circumstances distinctly charged with a common interest or goal. For those of us with kids, that usually means our kids' friends' parents. We stand next to one another as our kids co-do whatever it is they happen to be in to that week* and chop it up, conversationally speaking, about our kids and grades and property taxes and traffic patterns and travel routes and those pushy assholes in the PTA who judge us when we bring store-bought cookies to the bake sale, like we're all stay-at-home moms with nothing to do in the afternoon but futz around until we shit out an overdressed pavlova that's so burdened with flair it looks like it came straight from a Mafia wedding... nothing particularly probing or controversial. All surfaces, but they didn't corner you into a commitment to buy anything Avon or force you to pretend to be un-horrified by their very real fight against not-at-all metaphorical demons and dark spirits. So at the end, you nod knowingly as you collect your spawn and make vague noises in the direction of "we should totally get together one of these days."

The agreed-upon fiction of "one of these days" is the keystone to this particular archway to nowhere, made entirely of the kind of hollow, insincere, TOTALLY MADE UP good intentions that keep organized religion and the stock market aloft. We're very careful not to disturb those things with actual action because as everyone knows, if you start getting all touchy-curious with the keystone, eventually the whole building comes down.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent some very intense, very personal time together over the past 6-to-12 months. And then, when it was over, President Obama did exactly what you're supposed to do and said "yeah, this was great, we should totally get together one of these days."

And because these are the two most watched men in the history of stereoscopic vision, somebody wrote that down. And then this Pageant of Awkwardness broke out as a result. I suspect it was this Susan Rice I keep hearing about. She seems to deserve the scorn.

I can see what the origins of this error were. Yes, they were inextricably publicly linked, applying for the same job and all. They spent a lot of time addressing one another, usually with naked disdain, and found that they did in fact have some common interests, like obtaining and holding world-dominating economic and military power.

Yes, Barack Obama extended the invitation he didn't mean and, as I said, being a man of his stupid word, found himself in a position to have to endure something called "white turkey chili"** with the least interesting person to run for president since... well, OK, only since John Kerry, but still. At least George Bush knew better than to choke down food next to such a black hole of charisma.

Keeping his word seems like a straight-shooter thing to do, but as with most things involving Barack Hussein Obama, I'm wondering if there wasn't a more sinister motive at play. I'm worried that BHO is actually just kind of a dick.

"Come have a look at the office you will never occupy. Here's the desk where I sign things into law for all of America. And this is the couch I sometimes put my feet up on, shoes and all, during policy meetings, because nobody is allowed to tell me I can't. Not bad for a Nephite, eh? Oh, and hey, wanna see the adjoining private study? Clinton used to bag the occasional slumpbuster in here, but now I just use it to smoke out and listen to Al Green records. I call it 'Little Colorado.' Did I mention I'm black?"

I look at that picture of Mitt Romney, with that same forced half-a-rictus and I can only think of his briefly public presidential transition website and I think: this is pretty fucking sad.

Hilarious. And an enormous relief. But sad. For him mostly. I'm pretty OK with how it all turned out, really, now that I think about it. And he also said single mothers cause gun violence. So in retrospect, he can eat a dick. But still, sad for him. To the extent that appears possible.



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*birthday party, Pokemon card fight tournament, school choir, baseball, community service freeway trash pickup, whatever

**I've frankly had it with the coded racial buzzwords.