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Guest Editorial: Tom Roeser
June 2, 2011
Size 44 Weird
by Thomas F. Roeser
fitzgerald griffin foundation
Many presidents have, on occasion, done weird things—only one president of the 44 is Weird.
Our current 44th.
On the night before his abdication, Nixon (the 37th) went from public room to public room in the downstairs White House saying goodbye to the portraits on the wall (“Bye-bye James Madison...John Quincy Adams!”) He had weird episodes but was not ipso facto Weird with a capital W. In fact he was the cockeyed genius who split in twain the dread Sino-Soviet twin-headed bloc — for which in liberal-written history books he has been given insufficient credit.
Jimmy Carter (the 39th) claimed that while canoeing near his Plains, Georgia, summer White House he was attacked by a vicious rabbit which tried to climb in his boat while he beat it back with a paddle (Secret Service said it did not observe this scuffle). Despite bouts of weirdness, he was successful in the Camp David Accords in alleviating for a time a Middle East war.
Ronald Reagan (the 40th) faithfully obeyed Nancy Reagan’s astrologer about the most propitious time for him to schedule things while important matters were put on hold waiting for the Beverly Hills lady seer’s answer. This was an example of weirdness but he was not Weird. Far from it. He broke the back of the U.S.S.R. with negotiations in Geneva and Iceland when he convinced Gorbachev we had the stuff to produce STAR-WARS and they didn’t. Brilliant.
And presidents have often overcome familial difficulties to do important things.Take Bill Clinton (the 42nd), always a scarred veteran of a broken family which showed — original name: William Jefferson Blythe IV whose 4-times married mother, a practical nurse, was a regular blowing her hard-earned bucks at the $2 window at Hot Springs’ Oaklawn race track. As a child Billy Blythe stood between her and an abusive male boyfriend who threatened to beat her to death. She left nursing after a probe opened up about the sudden deaths of two elderly patients in her care at a nursing home, ending in her acquittal by the Arkansas medical examiner. Clinton was not unfamiliar with weirdness ala Monica Lewinsky but wisely adopted a GOP congress’s welfare reform and budget strategy which aided an economic boom.
Verdict: He could be weird but was not Weird.
And then we get to 44.
The difference: He is — and embodies — Weird.
Previous presidents had no trouble spelling out their belief in God. Not so Number 44.
No previous presidents bowed to foreign potentates.
Not so Number 44 who bowed deferentially to the King of Saudi Arabia — then after being criticized, bowed waist-down to Japan’s emperor and empress — both rulers of color.
All presidents since Roe v. Wade were either totally against killing babies in the womb or ambiguously compliant urging abortions “safe [sic]… and rare.” Like Clinton.
Except Number 44.This year in a celebratory statement for Roe he declared it protects women “from governmental intrusion.”
Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a raving pro-abort, ex-ACLUer says catapulting the issue to the Supremes was an act of legal folly, short-circuiting the process by which she hoped legislatures one after another would legalize the procedure so as not to precipitate the national crisis of division we have endured since. By the Court interfering, it preempted the people. Not governmental intrusion?
Ginsburg’s as liberal as one can get.
But she can’t touch Old 44 who’s got a hold on Weird.
As Illinois state senate judiciary chair he killed the Born Alive bill that would have mandated nutrition, medicines and humane comfort be accorded to babies born live from botched abortions. Call him the walking embodiment of King Herod with a light touch.The fact he’s so remorseless shows he’s unconcerned, not unaware of the magnanimity of his deed.
Like a gerbil sans conscience, he had his two daughters show Chinese President Hu Jintao their command of Chinese — their genially smiling father unconcerned that the Chinese government has forced women to have abortions under the “one-child policy” forcing urban dwellers to abort, punishing second pregnancies with forced sterilization with particular disdain to female infants through abortion, purposeful neglect, willful abandonment and infanticide known to be imparted to girl babies.Later, displaying baleful unconcern he praised Hu: “While it’s easy to focus on our difference of culture, let us never forget the values that our people share: a reverence for family… and, most of all, the desire to give our children a better life.”[Italics mine].
That’s what Weird is, folks.
Weird Attracts Weird at Tucson.
And he draws weirdos — as iron filings grovel to a magnet.
Just before Obama was to read his ghost-written Tucson speech on the teleprompter, the university-designated representative Invoker marched to the podium. Not a priest, rabbi or Protestant minister — but an Obama-clone iron filing Weird from the U. of Arizona, with a glint in his eyes, holding aloft an eagle feather.
Yep. While an iron-filing Weird, he was pushed forward by those filings on the Arizona faculty drawn to the Obama event like other odd ones, scurrying to the central magnet.
After the professor moved from platitudinous self-indulgence of his own biography, he got around to delivering a “prayer” he described it as of ancient Indian origin. His invocation was a true fit — Perfect Weird — a capstone illustrative for the Obama presidency. It didn’t mention God, didn’t ask for God’s blessing of comfort on the assemblage. It called for honoring the “Seven Directions” — including Father Sky, Mother Earth but he didn’t get around to the other five.I hereby give excerpts.
“O Creator, may the two energies, the masculine energy and the feminine energy, come together in our center where the Creator exists. For each of us have a piece of the Creator...”At least he could manage to say the word “Creator.” Our president ex-University of Chicago lecturer on “constitutional law” couldn’t get himself to do that on three separate occasions … alleging that we were endowed with certain inalienable rights but by Whom stuck in his throat.
“Let us not forget our fellow creatures,” the U. of Arizona professor intoned. “Those that crawl on the earth, those that slither on the earth…” We’ve acknowledged those which crawl and slither — which presumably includes those which wriggle, creep and slink. He finally gets to those which skulk around under the earth.
Finally the professor gets to something like us: “those that stand” but there’s no reference to humans. “Those that stand” on two legs can also refer to ostriches and birds. This description covers macropods, kangaroo, mice, springhare, and hominem apes. The ancestors of crocodiles were once bipedal. In fact I’m told they still — rarely it is true — rear up on their hind legs to fight or copulate, to reach food, look out for enemies, threaten a competitor, and try to seduce females in courtship.He never included humans as a classification.
It’ll likely not surprise you that the weird invoker was just another flaky super-liberal Catholic, Tucson variety. He is Dr. Carlos Gonzales, an associate professor of medicine (God help us), who, it just struck the University of Arizona president drawn personally to Obama, to be the perfect guy for the invocation for Obama’s address.
“I was asked by the University to give a traditional Native American blessing,” Gonzales said. “This is the type of blessing that we give at memorial services to open up a ceremony. A medicine man will do a variation of it to open up a pow-wow — and how each direction has a certain characteristic that when you pray to that direction, you ask for the inspiration that comes from that direction.” You see, an Indian view has no heaven, no hell.”He added, “my prayer is whatever your particular denomination deems to be the important entity.”
You can just bet this nihilism was not lost on Old 44, he understanding he must sublimate his weirdness for the time being as Billy Daley works to get him reelected but at least one bona fide Weird got the message through at Tucson that day.
The chemistry that tips the emotional lefty pool tables so the balls roll toward Obama caused Rahm Emanuel to get himself kicked out of the lunatic 3rd World insane asylum in the White House after he used 4-letter words to tell the incumbent to change his ways from the concept there is no patriotism but global — and rush to the relatively bucolic order of Chicago Squid politics to keep his sanity. Emanuel’s not Weird just a Squid pragmatist weasel born without a moral core.
Last week he passed muster on his Chicago residency with the Illinois State Supreme Court. After all, its majority is Democrat and The Squid still has the “paid for” receipt — but, still, the vote was unanimous.
This column appeared originally at tomroeser.com on January 31, 2011. An abridged version appeared in January 27 edition of The Wanderer newspaper, America’s oldest national Catholic weekly.Thomas F. Roeser was a radio talk show host, writer, lecturer, teacher, and former Vice President of The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. He was both a John F. Kennedy Fellow (Harvard University), and a Woodrow Wilson International Fellow. Tom Roeser was author of the book, Father Mac: The Life and Times of Ignatius D. McDermott, Co-Founder of Chicago's Famed Haymarket Center (2002). Long-active in Chicago politics, Mr. Roeser was Chairman of Catholic Citizens of Illinois, a grassroots organization of Catholics.
© 2011 Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation