Obama's Slippery Slope

In any metropolis other than Washington, D.C., small-talk about the weather would be a safe topic, "much-ado-about-nothing," like water off a duck's back. Unfortunately for our newly-installed 44th President, Washington is unlike any other metropolis in the United States when it comes to weather.

This the clueless President learned when, as the first light snow-cum-freeze hit the metropolitan area's Beltway and neighborhoods one week-and-a-day after taking the oath of office, he quipped about his daughters' school having a snow-day, apparently much to his disapproval and their surprise. Opining that Washingtonians are "wimpy" in contrast to Nanook of the North Chicagoans, people from Chantilly to Chevy Chase took umbrage in what they considered to be an insult from their newly-arrived neighbor. Little did he know that he was on the slippery slope from snowstorm to maelstrom. In fact, most of the District's public schools were open, albeit with a late start, but that fact was apparently unknown to the new occupant of the Maison Blanche.

President Obama hit a nerve in remarking on the region's ability - or inability - to competently handle (with apologies to Chief Justice Roberts' life-long aversion to split infinitives) Mother Nature's gift of frozen precipitation...But I think the President owes the people of Washington an apology, and Washingtonians ought to cut him some slack.

Our physically-fit-ready-to-meet-all-comers President would go a long way towards pouring oil on troubled ice if he acknowledged that, since he most recently hailed from Chicago, where that city's snowfall warrants oversight at least six-months of the year, (thus creating an industry of snow-removal rivaled maybe only by Buffalo's) that perhaps his comments were a tad - harsh. To say nothing of the facts that Chicago is largely inundated by a blanket of pure snow (not ice or freezing rain) whose removal is operated under the auspices of just one city's administration; in contrast, Washington's dance with frozen precipitation is frequently a guesswork-in-progress, whose removal is subject to multiple municipalities' mandates.

If either President Obama or any of his family had been trapped in last year's Mixing Bowl's frozen nightmare (Perhaps he was elsewhere campaigning, and unaware of the almost-menacing grip ice had upon that newly-finished engineering wonder?), I doubt that he would have been so glib in his snowfall remarks. But more importantly, I suspect that underneath the bravado and rhetoric of the 44th President abides a desire to close the gap that existed between his predecessor and the press corps. And what better way to do this than by talking "small-talk," preferably something really, really safe - the weather. So, Washingtonians should get over it, and give the President a pass.

After all, President Obama is Commander-in-Chief only of the Armed Forces, not of Mother Nature and her Washington wiles.

DEUS EX MACHINA

If prayer works as promised, then Barack Obama, the twice-vested 44th President of these United States, should be in good shape. In the days immediately surrounding his whirlwind inauguration, President Obama was prayed over in a veritable maelstrom of prayer services, benedictions, invocations, supplications, implorations and entreaties.

The charasmatic president is going to need all the succor he can muster, whether from divine or mundane sources. The litany of crises confronting the planet's de-facto most popular leader has been well- and oft-documented, from Hoboken to Honolulu; Concord to Congress. The collapse of capitalism as we know it, home foreclosures on a scale akin to a sale on five day-old fish, unemployment rates ratcheting skyward, companies declaring bankruptcy in record numbers, 47 million Americans living without health insurance and a national debt climbing to the stratosphere are just a few of the issues jostling for "me-first" attention from the President.

And those are only the domestic concerns. We don't even want to think about national security, the Guantanamo Bay black hole, our trussed-like-a-Thanksgiving-turkey position in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian President (sounds like, according to my impeccably funny source, Whoopi Goldberg) Ahm-a-dinnajacket's determination to "go nuclear," the no-way-out Israeli-Palestinian quagmire and, oh yes, global warming, for good measure!

Prayer circle, anyone? One need only look to media pictures of the estimated
1.8 million who stood for hours in freezing cold temperatures on Inauguration Day, having no chance of catching a glimpse of the actual man, to recognize what has, for many, been rock-star adulation. Perhaps not since the Sermon on the Mount have expectations run so high. But it's not a rock-star the people crave: What they seek is a Deus ex Machina, a God out-of-thin air.

As the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount knew, deification comes with a hefty price tag: feeding the hordes. President Obama, well-schooled in the dangers of living life on a pedestal or in an ivory tower, addresses the multitudes with the papal "we" over the first-person "I" when delineating the mountain of work that lies ahead. All things considered, it might be a good idea, not only to keep on praying, but to step it up. That way, maybe we can be assured of our own miracle, a modern-day equivalent of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.

A BLESSING IN EVERY LANGUAGE...

A blessing - Baraka - be upon the White House of Barack Obama, 44th President of these United States, and all who dwell therein.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009