WAY THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
By
Dr. W.R. Marshall, Ph.D
April 19, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
(Note to all you Charles Dodgson purists; I am well aware the white rabbit begins Alice in Wonderland while a black kitten is the trigger in Through the Looking Glass – but gimme a break, I’m trying to make a point here.)
It is possible I was sitting on the bank of the Thames with my sister when a white rabbit wearing a vest and carrying a pocket watch ran by and shouted “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” After which the rabbit ran down a hole and I jumped in after him.
Except I don’t have a sister and every rabbit I know wears a G-Shock!
However, things got so weird last week I’ve got no other explanation but to think I’ve slipped into an alternate reality, and now I sit by the mailbox and wait for the dormouse to bring me an invitation to a croquet party in Afghanistan hosted by Dick Cheney and Tweedledee. (Tweedledubya had to be at the White House for a big dance and veto party.)
This isn’t just the usual weirdness of Fearless Leader Bush’s tenuous hold on reality, or Congress rolling over for Petraeus, or even the smoking gun of memos from a Cheney led White House cabal extolling the virtues of torture and no one getting excited about it. Hell, that’s all de rigueur around these parts.
No, I’m talking about to Obama’s use of the word “bitter” when referring to a part of the electorate in Pennsylvania and, here it comes, Hillary’s response: she called him “elitist.”
Yes, elitist.
A rich white woman called a black man, “elitist.”
We all know how “elite” those black folk can be, what with their whining about slavery and their marching for this ‘n that, and all that carrying on about equality, and whatever else that Martin Luther King fella was screaming about. I don’t know about you, but when I think elitist, I look for the first black face I can find. I never think about Cheney’s “So” on the country’s overwhelming opposition to the war. I never consider Bush’s “I hadn’t heard that” when told of impending $4 a gallon gas.
Nope, the first thing that pops into my mind when I think “elitist” is a black guy whose father was from Africa and whose mother was from Kansas – now that says royalty to me.
But it didn’t end there. Within what seemed like minutes of Clinton sticking the “elitist” name tag on Obama’s chest, she hits a bar in Indiana and does a boilermaker with the locals showing she’s just plain folk…
…$100,000,000 plain folk.
Given the current political landscape – and after almost eight years of being constantly pushed down the rabbit hole by the Red King – none of this should seem strange…yet…
Has it dawned on anyone, let alone Hillary Clinton, that the last person we elected who we thought we wanted to have a beer with is currently enjoying a 28% approval rating, (that’s rock bottom Carter and closing in on Nixon), and is thought by many to be the worst president in American history. Maybe Hillary started drinking before she hit the bar, and that’s why she thought it was a good idea.
And since we’re past the point of no return, let’s talk about elitists. I want an elitist president. I want a person who speaks six languages, who does differential calculus to relax, who actually knows world history, and can put together articulate sentences with both dependant and independent clauses. I don’t want to be smarter than the leader of the free world (and trust me, right now, most of us are). I want Thomas Jefferson to run things. Where’s John Adams when you need him?
Smart is good. What we’ve been subjected to for the better part of a decade is the opposite of smart, hence, not good. But when you’re stuck on the wrong side of the looking glass, things get a bit twisted. I mean, where else can a black man be an “elitist” and a wealthy white woman be a “man of the people?”
� 2008 - W.R. Marshall - All Rights Reserved
