Hesitation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4gJJrhT7MY

Watch that first. Then we’ll talk.

You know…it’s getting a little carried away, this whole Barack Obama thing. I’m seriously waiting for Rolling Stone to do a cover story that reads, “Obama Turns White House Water Cooler into Wine.” Maybe I’m hyper-sensitive about it because I just got through listening to eight years of lambasting Dubya unfairly (in my opinion), but every time I look at any magazine anywhere, all I’m seeing is Messianic pictures of this guy waving at crowds, with big text under his face reading, “Hope” or “Change” or “Why He Will Cure AIDS While Also Beating Up Osama bin Laden.” I mean, I know newly elected Presidents get a little bit of a honeymoon, but this is something else entirely; we’re kind of handing this guy the reigns of public opinion for free, and it makes me feel a little gross.

It’s not just that he hasn’t earned this kind of adoration, but make no mistake that he absolutely has not. He earned it in the campaign, but that’s meaningless now, because he’s the leader of the free world and he has to earn a very new kind of respect. We should all be standing quietly around, faces calm, waiting to soberly analyze his first move, and instead we’re jumping up and down like he’s Elvis and feeding him lines. I mean, guys…he hasn’t really done anything yet, why are we all so pleased with him already? Doesn’t he have to, like, prove himself or something? What if Barack turns out to be a terrible effing President? How stupid will we feel when we look up the National Archives and read about this crap?

Or, even worse, what if this guy is a really good President, and we don’t recognize it? A fundamental law of human nature is that what goes up must come down. Eventually, we are going to wake up from the drunken stupor and start asking the Oval Office, “What have you done for me lately?” Eventually, all this patting him on the back is going to evolve into a cynical holding out of our empty hands, and if that happens, it won’t matter if he’s doing a good job, because no President could possibly change things as quickly or drastically as we would require to be satisfied. If we keep acting like Barack Obama is going to cure cancer, eventually we’re going to start getting pissed off that he hasn’t yet.

Obama captures our imagination, and I get that, but I think the free pass we’re handing him is dangerous, both for ourselves and for him. Our endless adoration now may prevent him from really distinguishing himself on his own steam, and that would be the greatest tragedy of all. I have a hard time believing this man will be bad at his job—anyone who snags the Democratic nomination before he even completes his first term in the Senate must know something I don’t—but I have a very easy time imagining that the kind of miraculous transformation we’re expecting is a fairy tale that will drown out any real accomplishments he might have.

Also, seeing the whole country swoon and fall over for this guy is a little un-American, we’re supposed to keep a cool head about stuff like this. The worst offender is “Saturday Night Live,” which has inexplicably dulled the razor of its satire for this man. Their job is to lampoon and ridicule sitting Presidents, and they have always maintained that they mock both sides equally, and yet the sketches on Obama are (I kid you not) actually complimenting him. One of them “makes fun” of the fact that Barack likes to resolve conflict peacefully; ooooh, burn! You basically tore Sarah Palin down for every word she spoke, and she took it with grace, but you can’t find a single ridiculous thing about a Junior Senator whose middle name is “Hussein,” was married by a preacher who blames the US for 9/11, completely flubbed his inauguration, and may be among the most inexperienced men we’ve ever put in the White House. Nice work, you partisan (*)&*&S(*@#!!@.

Ahem.

My point is, I don’t like to see our objectivity break down. I didn’t like it when we rallied against Bush and blamed him for every mosquito bite anyone got, and I don’t like it when we bow down like our new President is some kind of golden calf that Aaron fashioned while Moses wasn’t looking. We do a disservice to this man by glorifying him before he’s done anything, and we need to cut it out. If you sincerely believe this guy could be a great President, and I do, then the best thing you can do for him is shut the hell up until he walks the walk, so that when he does we can all call it like it is. Right now, we’re creating an emotional environment where no one will be able to tell what Barack actually did for another fifty years.

God bless “South Park” for speaking the truth in that clip (albeit in hyperbolic fashion). I’ve found in my time watching the show that they do that a lot more than you might imagine. Unlike a lot of the overwhelmingly liberal entertainment industry, Trey and Matt will go after any target that deserves it, and I admire that.