In the mid-1930s, before TV, there was a popular radio talent show called "The Major Bowes Amateur Hour." The winners were treated well, and so were most of the losers. But when a losing singer or comic or tap dancer was really bad he was treated in a way that defies belief in today's more civilized society.
They gave him "the gong"!
If the person demonstrating his "talent" was bad enough, Major Bowes didn't even let him finish! Instead of letting him do his act and then disappear, with polite applause, back to his day job, the audience heard a loud gong right in the middle of everything, and that signaled, "We've heard enough. Please, now, begone!"
This may be stretching the permissible limits of pundit-self-service, but I've long recalled with self-congratulation how sorry I felt for those performers who got the gong, and how unnecessary I felt that disgusting little ritual was. And when I had those praiseworthy thoughts I was every bit of 4 years old!
Where is that gong now that we need it? And I don't mean for singers and dancers. I mean for presidents, secretaries of state, both present and recent, and candidates and other personnel that make up "government." Yes, we need a "gong." Impeachment is too complicated and too slow.
What brings on a rant like this? There's such a thing as a limit. We all know what one additional straw can do to a camel's back! Or, as Mason said to Dixon, "You gotta draw a line somewhere!"
There've been plenty of times in America when the people were stupid but the leaders were bright. And there've been times when the people outsmarted the leaders. Right now could be the first time that leadership and population may be equally incompetent. And that's dangerous!
Just listen to the interviewer ask the man-or-woman-on-the-street-or-in-the-audience why they support the former secretary of state: "Well," you're likely to hear, "she had four years experience as secretary of state and I …" Yet notice how abruptly and totally people lose their audio when they're asked to cite one single accomplishment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state or, for that matter, as a senator. No magic there. She HAS no accomplishments. And her judgment is terrible. But that neither eliminates nor muffles the applause.
However it's the present secretary of state who drives me to the Ranting Wall right now. Situation: Two American naval vessels that can outrun anything else afloat get pulled over to the side of the watery road in the Persian Gulf by an Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel. Our sailors get an order from we-know-not-where-or-whom to "stand down"! That means don't do anything to antagonize an enemy. Our American "prisoners" are treated to systematic humiliation at the time of apprehension, but the "best" is yet to come.
Secretary of State Kerry at that time thanks the Iranians for "taking such good care" of our sailors and "allowing them to return to their travels in a prompt and professional manner." Comedian Bob Hope won everlasting fame with a number called "Thanks for the Memories." Kerry and his boss, Barack Obama, are winning everlasting fame now with a number called "Thanks for the Humiliation"!
We're not through yet. In celebration of Hostage Day or Screw-America Day, or Twelfth Imam Day or whatever they just celebrated in Iran, they presented a little "re-enactment" of the humiliating surrender of the seagoing American devils to the heroes of the Islamic Revolution. That little drama missed no chance to belittle and shame the United States of America and make us look exactly like the pathetic cowards our troops were ordered to look like. And the crowd cheered like mad.
And did Secretary of State Kerry show the mullahs where the bear sat in the buckwheat? Did he run, cursing, into the State Department briefing auditorium and throw the piano through a plate-glass window? Did he even withdraw his diseased praise of the Iranians for "taking such good care" of our military personnel? Have you heard it? Do you hear it now? You may have to wait a while before you hear it, like until hell gets cold enough to kill snap-beans!
Do you think all of this is trivial? Do you think this is all political garbage disguised as baggage? Take it from Osama bin Laden, people will get behind the strong horse, not the weak horse. Which one do you suppose we resemble more? Trivial, indeed! What do you think our pitiful posture does for ISIS recruitment? What does it do to the spirit of our allies in the region?
The oldest political joke in Europe is the one in which the big countries spit in the face of the small countries, and the small countries have to pretend it's raining. That's not a joke with Kerry-&-Company. It's the new American way of international life.
This country that did so much to rescue civilization over the past century is now reduced to a cartoon, a cartoon in which Secretary of State John Kerry timidly approaches the Iranian leaders and says, "Have you got any more humiliation? It was delicious!"
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