It is by deep consensus the funniest moment in the history of radio comedy. Jack Benny's well-nurtured shtick was that he was a terminal tightwad. That converted into a lot of laughs for a lot of years.
On one Sunday night's show Jack was walking alone on a Hollywood side street when a furtive voice muttered, "All right, Buddy. This is a stick-up. Your money or your life."
Then, silence. Then more silence. Then laughter. Then more laughter as the studio audience caught on. The hold-up man said, "Are you deaf or something? I said, your money or your life!"
An anguished Jack Benny blurted forth, "I'm thinking it over!"
Most Americans seem to accept the narrative that it took a while and there were a lot of different answers en route, but our president has thankfully come down upon the right answer, namely, ISIS should not be downgraded to a "manageable problem"; ISIS must be destroyed. That conclusion may earn America the title of "Most Polite Country On Earth," but it'll never win the title of "Country Most Likely to Survive."
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Whosoever feels comforted that Obama finally has the right notion about ISIS is too far gone to deal with. Let's hope all those guilty of such poor thinking will forget to vote. They make me sorry I don't have any more bridges to sell. Jack Benny taking a whole bunch of time to decide whether he'd rather hand over his pocket money or get shot is funny. The president of the United States ducking, stalling, equivocating and trying on a selection of other positions before settling on "Destroy ISIS" is not funny. If Obama's latest statement on ISIS were a rope bridge, I wouldn't trust it to sustain the weight of my pet ant walking across.
Can you believe there was an Obamacrat toady on TV last week praising the president for his unhurried scrutiny of all possible options before, "Hand me the envelope, please. The winner is: 'ISIS must be destroyed'"?
One wonders, not out of political spite but out of genuine human curiosity, what Barack Obama would have done if he'd been president on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Would he have taken FDR's path to victory and addressed a joint session of Congress the next day to seek and get a declaration of war? Or would there have been meetings late into the night with Attorney General Eric Holder to consider the precise wording of an urgent protest to be hand-carried to the League of Nations by dawn's early light?
I really can't tell much about a man by his handshake. But from my dating days I can recall all the vital intelligence that's suddenly yours when you reach for a woman's hand midway through the first date. You're getting precious signals, fellows, if only you've got brains and guts enough to decode them.
A national leader who, after the first ISIS beheading of an innocent American, hesitates one millisquidgen of a split second to embrace the "Destroy" option should be stripped of his control of the Senate and ignored for his final two years in office.
This calculation rests on common sense and spreads its value far beyond survival politics. We all know there's a magic moment in every relationship when the match feels "right." Start the clock there, Girls, and tell me: What does he say to you at that point? "You're kinda nice"? "You're real nice"? "I like you"? "I like you a lot"? How long does it take him to say "I love you"? You're telling me he hasn't said it yet, but you have a feeling that's how he feels? And you don't want to jeopardize that nice feeling of having an ardent "date" getting real? OK, good luck, but don't forget your Uncle Barry warned you.
Remember when Sen. Barry Goldwater and an all-star team of House and Senate Republicans invited themselves to Nixon's office to tell him he was through back in 1974? We need a team of all-star Capitol Hill Democrats to invade the Oval Office and tell Obama, "The American people have demonstrated enough generosity of spirit to pretend you're a deliberative leader who has deliberated on the major issue facing this nation and arrived at the right answer about ISIS. We're not going to mess that up. But the evidence of your vacillation, softness, and, yes, even sympathy for the Islamic cause is bigger than that dinosaur fossil they just discovered in Argentina! We want you to back up your words with the kind of deeds Roosevelt, Patton, Reagan – you know, that crowd! – would have furnished, and we want those deeds visible or evident within two weeks of right now, or you'll be the lamest duck in the whole history of poultry."
Why is it that whenever Obama voices a policy I disagree with, he seems kissed by tongues of enthusiastic flame? And whenever he voices a policy I like, I still feel like the president of a corporation, in the hospital, who gets a note from the chairman of the board stating, "I have been authorized by the Board of Directors to wish you a speedy recovery, by a vote of five to four"!
Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact [email protected].
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