Singing truth to power

By Marita Vargas

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason. Sir John Harrington A mighty oak from a little A.C.O.R.N. grows. He who laughs best, laughs in Heaven. M.V.

If comedy is tragedy plus time — how long will it take for Americans to laugh at the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama? And while it is true that not everyone regards his election as a tragedy, those millions of us who do, know that someday his ascendancy will be regarded as the biggest joke ever played on the American people — if we survive it. Yet satire of our man in the Oval Office (the O.M.I.T.O.O.) has been almost non-existent. The mirth dearth raises the perennial political question: Is satire dead or just its practitioners?

Now, I'm not talking about literal death. But, perhaps a qualified use of the term brain-dead applies. When the President of the United States stands before the American people and tells us that he is going to spend his way out of a recession AND that he is going to cut the deficit, editorial cartoonists from coast to coast should laugh all the way to the bank. (If they can find one.) Humor enlightens by putting the preposterous into perspective and by making us feel less afraid. Alarmingly, the absurdities that regularly pour forth from this White House meet with nothing more than fawning approval. Where have all the professional parodists gone? Their silence is unnerving.

It is up to us — the common people — to show them the way. The Internet is humming with Obama-bashers, but America needs a song. That is why I humbly offer the following, in the best American tradition. You see — ever since the Continental Army sang Yankee Doodle Dandy at the top of its lungs, turning what the British had meant as a sneer, back on the enemy — Americans have been a people who can laugh at themselves, handily turning back tyranny at the same time, all while singing a song. So — Stand up and sing! Here goes!

Barry You're Way Too Cool

The star of our drama,
Barry Obama,
doesn't play by the rules;
but he's a sensation
across the whole nation —
Barry you're way too cool.

He'll deal out a whammy
to poor Uncle Sammy,
and heap him in ridicule;
we know he's a commie
without any qualmies —
let's build him a swimmin' pool.

We'll call him our Swami,
Barry O'Balmie,
baiting religious fools;
'cause he's the messiah,
let no one deny-ah —
Barry you're way too cool.

He can't stand a lobby,
Barry O'Bobby;
honesty is his jewel;
unless you're a crony
or tax-cheating phony —
to chide him would be too cruel.

He doesn't have humor,
like many a Boomer,
his ego would break in two;
he's used to oblations
and standing ovations
pardon me if I drool —
but Barry, you're way too cool.

The lyrics are pure Mad Magazine; the allusions are pure mad, mad world. The job of the satirist is to offer the sane comment in an insane world; the result is usually cleansing laughter. Events ripe for lampooning pop up almost every day in D.C. When the leader of the Free World swears he will win over tyrants by engaging them in dialogue, but can't answer an honest question from Helen Thomas; the only thing to keep one from howling in pain is to begin howling with laughter.

Our president is funny. His unemployment stimulus figures are wildly wrong, but he wants us to trust him with the overhaul of healthcare. He has promised to "further" stimulate the economy by socializing medicine, but has failed to note that Medicare is bankrupt. (Not to mention the rest of the country.) He has the gall to chastise those who would question his hair-brained policy as naysayers full of "chatter," but has never met their opposition with reasoned answers. He is lauded for his eloquence, but can't leave home without his teleprompter. He is an expert pitchman for every failed Left-over notion, but can't put a ball across home plate.

Malcolm Muggeridge used to lament the lack of satire in a world grown too absurd to inspire it — he had a point. But Americans are not Britons — we will not accept the Brave New World without a whimper. The great mass of men can be persuaded by common sense to reject the all-powerful state that Mr. Obama and his Commissars have in store for us. Nothing is so healing to the body politic as humor in such a situation.

We know that it was because we could turn out Ninotchka that we won the Cold War. We know that humor has a way of cutting the arrogant down to size and that it shares the same root as that other quality singularly lacking in the O.M.I.T.O.O. — humility. It is humility that sings truth to power; it is humor that causes us to remember that we are all made of a bit of clay.

How long will it take Americans to catch-on to the fact that a man, who allows himself to be called a messiah and to be compared to God, is unfit to hold the highest office in our land? As long as it took George Orwell to catch-on to Stalin ('37)? Are we to laugh Mr. Obama off the stage of history in the spirit of Animal Farm or wait for things to grow as grim as 1984? Let us hope we start laughing before it is too late. He, who laughs last, laughs best; but unless we act quickly, some of us taking our final chuckle, are going to find that we are in need of gallows humor.

© Marita Vargas