Shut up and fail

As many readers of this column have heard by now, late last week at the White House Correspondents Dinner, an event traditionally geared toward poking fun at sitting presidents, comedian Wanda Sykes let loose with both barrels at conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

In case you're not familiar with the incident, at the dinner, Sykes accused Limbaugh of speaking treasonously in that his disdain for Obama's agenda could be equated with wanting America to fail, and thus, wanting the American people to lose their homes, their jobs and soldiers in Iraq.

Rush Limbaugh, "I hope the country fails" – I hope his kidneys fail; how about that?

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– Wanda Sykes

If nothing else, President Obama has proven that one doesn't have to be a jabbering caricature with horrible diction to be a successful black person in America. For some reason, a retrogression to this stereotype seemed to be the order of the day with Sykes' appearance. Though she is a talented performer, and despite the sympathetic audience, Sykes' shtick came off as unimpressive, halting and rather feeble.

I doubt she cares about what I have to say, of course. To her, no doubt I'm just another "Unkoo Tom."

The issue at hand is bigger than Wanda Sykes, although it does underscore the fact that the hypocrisy of the far left as regards the shameless practice of those very things of which they accuse the right knows no bounds.

You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.

– President Obama, Jan. 23, 2009

A statement of this gravity, uttered by a president, effectively becomes a "contract." This, as well as several other devices that have come from this administration recently (such as the Homeland Security report characterizing returning war veterans as extremists and potential recruits for domestic terrorists), essentially gave the far left license to assail anything and anyone to the right of where they are ensconced.

Washington elite's message to you: "Shut Up, America!" – Get Brad O'Leary's new book about the effort to muzzle talk radio

Since then, an offensive has been mounted across areas of far-left pre-eminence (such as the press and the entertainment industry) to demonize anything conservative or smacking of traditional values. All Obama has to do now is sit back and grin (as he did while Sykes spewed her oral diarrhea) while his surrogates instill fear into the collective American subconscious.

Another recent example of this not-so-subtle new movement came when Carrie Prejean, the California contestant in the Miss USA pageant, was passed up for first place due to her views on gay marriage (an oxymoron, but that's another issue). Prejean's plight was newsworthy, to be sure, but the underlying story was that of yet another member of the far left hijacking cultural convention in order to advance an agenda. In this case, it was demonizing people who hold Christian beliefs.

I called her the "b" word, and hey, I was thinking the "c" word.

– Perez Hilton, video blog, April 20, 2009

Perez Hilton – the Miss USA judge who asked Prejean the gay marriage question during the pageant – is a decidedly loathsome creature. Cut from the same I'm going to be famous for something no matter what it takes cloth as Nina Blackwood, David Johansen and Rollarina (only New Yorkers will remember him), Hilton is a crude, catty, obsequious loser whose only claim to fame prior to the pageant was blogging about celebrities.

For the record, nearly all of the people who posted on the Miss USA website following Miss Prejean's second-place showing unequivocally supported her. Many of them, including gays who wrote in, could have set Hilton on fire.

Unfortunately, what the majority believe or want scarcely matters anymore. Since Obama took office, any pretense of shame, propriety or decorum has gone out the window. The far left are operating completely in the open now, as many predicted would happen. They hold the reins and plan to gain as much ground as they can. What frightens is the scant number of Americans who can even conceptualize where this might land us.

For the moment, their objective is to portray conservatives and Christians as a sufficient threat that ultimately, a majority of Americans will come to accept nearly any action taken to disenfranchise them. This would clear the field, as it were, for the state to become the ultimate arbiter of morality.

We've seen this sort of thing happen in the past, of course. I'm sure I don't have to remind everyone where and when.