I don't happen to be one of those people who keeps clamoring for Donald Trump to start behaving presidential, to mince his words and walk on eggs, lest the media compare him unfavorably to his predecessor. That, my friends, is inevitable, as it would be for any Republican in the White House.
Barack Obama was nearly always given a pass, no matter how many lies he told about the Affordable Care Act or the wonders of green energy, or how much money he squandered in the process of doubling our national debt in eight years.
In fact, if I hadn't heard it with my own ears, I never would have believed that two days before leaving the White House, Barack Obama had the chutzpah to address the fawning members of the press and say, with a perfectly straight face: "You're not supposed to be sycophants. You're supposed to be skeptics. You're supposed to ask me tough questions. You're not supposed to be complimentary. You're supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power."
I bet if I hadn't told you first, you wouldn't have guessed the source of those lines in a million years. Obama might as well have been winking at the ladies and gentlemen of the White House press corps. On the other hand, he could have concluded his statement with, "We all know that's how it's supposed to work, but I really appreciate the fact that you kissed my butt in 2008 and you never – not even when I blew $700 million on Solyndra and a trillion dollars on a Stimulus; not when I drew a red line in Syria and quickly erased it; not when I boasted we had al-Qaida on the run only to see ISIS immediately take its place; not when I lied to millions of Americans about their being able to keep their doctors and their insurance plans; not when I said two dozen times I lacked the constitutional authority to prevent illegal aliens from being deported, but then did it anyway; not even when I made a nuclear deal with Iran that gave the terrorists everything and gave us nothing – did you folks even consider unpuckering."
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On the other side, the media, led by the New York Times, compared photos of Obama's 2008 inaugural turnout to Trump's in order to visually embarrass the new president. But not only did they not mention the difference in the weather, but they further displayed their bias by running a photo taken before Trump's event had even begun. It was the journalistic equivalent of photoshopping.
To compound the sin, they took Trump and his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to task for complaining about the obvious bias. They carried on as if Trump shouldn't be concerned with such trivial matters, that it's simply further proof that he's a raging egomaniac. But in doing so, they're pretty much declaring that they constitute trivial matters, because if the public can't trust newspaper photos any more than they can trust newspaper copy, what exactly is that "Free Press" we keep hearing so much about? Perhaps it's nothing more than an empty platitude they toss around to make lying sound noble.
The media played down the symbolism when Barack Obama moved into the Oval Office and immediately got rid of the bust of Winston Churchill, even though it represented a tip of the hat to his anti-colonial, communist father. The press chose to ignore the insult to the man whose leadership during World War II did so much to defeat Nazism; a man, by the way, who was made an honorary American and who, like Obama, had an American mother.
Compare that to the outrage in the media when a Time magazine reporter accused Trump of moving the bust of Martin Luther King out of the Oval Office. While it's true that the reporter later acknowledged his mistake and apologized, lamely explaining that a Secret Service agent must have been standing in front of the bust, blocking it from his view, nevertheless, hundreds of newspapers eagerly passed it off as legitimate news.
As for those who feign concern that after repeatedly promising to drain the Washington swamp and insulting the political establishment, Trump won't be able to get along with House and Senate Republicans, I'm afraid their naivete is showing. Republican politicians have to get along with President Trump, not the other way around.
They're the ones that are going to want and need his support in the coming years as they run for re-election. He's the one with the bully pulpit or, in his case, the bully twitter account.
The media couldn't get enough of the anti-Trump demonstrations staged by left-wing female fanatics the day after the inauguration. One kept hearing reports that a million or 2 million women took part in these exercises in futility and foolishness.
I recall that when George W. Bush traveled to England early in his administration and the media went wild over the fact that 500,000 people in London showed up to display their displeasure with the cowboy president. At the time, I observed that roughly 8.5 million people lived in London, and I thought the bigger story was that 8 million Londoners stayed home.
I know that the left wants to convince us that Trump didn't really win the election. They tried it first by staging recounts. When that failed to do anything but gain him additional votes, they tried to pressure the delegates to the Electoral College not to vote for him. The pressure worked well enough to cost him two votes, but five people took advantage of the opportunity not to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Now, they decided to use the likes of Madonna, Gloria Steinem and Ashley Judd to convince us that American Womanhood is opposed to Trump. I'm afraid in a nation with roughly 170 million women, this handful of post-menstrual harpies screaming obscenities, comparing Trump to Hitler and fantasizing the White House being blown up, merely reminded most of us that some people find it more difficult than others to cope with the reality of being an over-the-hill has-been.
I'm sure that the ladies will ignore my advice, but I have their best interests at heart when I suggest they do what so many other aging celebrities have done in the past, and that is to write a memoir reminding people that there was in fact a time when a great many famous men had sex with them.
And so long as they name names and provide all the scintillating details, I'm sure Megyn Kelly, Oprah Winfrey and the shrews of "The View" will be only too happy to interview them.
Finally, it is my pleasure to announce that my memoir,"The Story of My Life,"is finally out and available at Amazon. Don't be the last kid on your block to read about those occasions when my life intersected with the likes of Groucho Marx, Oscar Levant, Ginger Rogers, William Peter Blatty, Gene Kelly, Lizabeth Scott, George Burns, Burt Reynolds, Andy Warhol, George C. Scott, Billy Wilder, Jackie Gleason, Spiro Agnew, Carol Burnett, Jack Webb, Fred Astaire and … Sonny Tufts?!
Media wishing to interview Burt Prelutsky, please contact [email protected].
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