People can be fooled. Hell, I wasted time, treasure and my very modest talents on John McCain's 2008 Campaign for President in the notion that a war hero who faced torture in the Hanoi Hilton had the stomach for the fiscal collapse of American banking due to the mortgage Ponzi scam of Dodd Franks. John McCain sleep walked to defeat and allowed his campaign managers to heap scorn on the woman he begged to be his running mate. One born every minute.
I was not that far gone in political mythology to believe that first term US Senator with a history of being a governmental purse puppy . . .nice, amiable, read a good speech, top-drawer clothes wrangler . . . with a career and biography crafted by bullet-proof clouted Leftists. Nope, I like Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate just fine. Nice guy; keeps a neat wallet.
Four the past five years, President Obama has lived up to my expectations. Only recently, it has become only too obvious that Obama is not any where near as great as canned beer. Oprah deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Gloria Steinem? Herb Alpert . . .the Lonely Bull? President Obama is A Million Little Pieces.
Why? Too many of us join book clubs. We do not seem to want to trust our ourselves with thoughts that must at some time be made public. We don't want to be wrong. We don't want to be embarrassed. We became Oprah's Book Club. We allowed monstrously verbally challenged Mayor Richie Daley dictate Chicago Reads. We formed our own little circles of readers who made agreement the touchstone for discourse. 'Yes, yes! Atticus Finch is the American Patriarch. The Color Purple is a Rainbow. The Third World is wonderful and makes us ashamed to be Americans. Greed is our only virtue. Bill Ayers is an educator!'
I have relatives who worship at the altar of the American Isis - Oprah. Me? I understood Oprah when her foundation watchdog ( Rufus Williams) tried to bully me into not sending any more funding requests to Harpo, or Ms. Winfrey. Rufus was rewarded aplenty! Oprah was not at all interested in helping an inner-city Catholic high school for boys that remains unapologetically nonsense free even though more than 90 % of the school demographic was and remains African American. Oprah's Angels fear to tread where special interest and corporate dollars pave the walkway.
It's America and it's her money. Personally, I am glad Oprah never made a drop.
Oprah maintains her ability convince millions of people to swallow exactly what she gulps down. The pinnacle of her arresting charms is President Obama. Last week President, after a year of concern in the public forums that perhaps Oprah had gone sour on the young fellow whose autobiographies ( ghosted or not) made a compelling narrative for the transformation of American Life.
Oprah swallowed Dreams from My Father and Audacity of Hope, not in a millions little pieces, but whole. Oprah was hood-winked by James Frey and Margaret B. Jones, two writers of autobiographies that stretched the truth like Turkish taffy fresh from the oven. Had the public not awakened to these literary frauds and people continued to believe the self-mortifying yarns of two phonies, the world would not have changed too much. People believe another person's fabrications because they are good-hearted and want to accept the word of fellow sinner and feel good about their own struggles in this vale of tears.
Oprah continues to promote the emptiness that is President Obama and wears the highest civilian decoration our country can bestow on a citizen.
