The only thing that made sitting through Obama’s Farewell Address bearable was the realization that he would have to vacate the premises in 10 days. But I must confess I spent the entire 53 minutes feeling sorry for myself and thinking about the sacrifices I make for my art, including sitting through eight State of the Union addresses and all 7,500 presidential debates.
Some people wondered why Obama decided to make Chicago the venue for his speech. But when the crowd greeted his appearance with five full minutes of applause, the question was quickly answered. Where else would he have found so many pinheads willing to overlook the reality of the Obama era?
It was as if the prior eight years had never happened. The fawning crowd no doubt confirmed in his mind that he was as great a president as he keeps insisting he was. Even when he said: “By any measure, America is a better, stronger country than it’s ever been,” they applauded like trained seals. As if that weren’t pathetic enough, when he went so far as to take bows for the Affordable Care Act, the single piece of legislation that did so much to help Republicans sweep Democrats out of the House and Senate, the nitwits kept clapping. I must confess that even I joined in.
Obama was at his hypocritical best when he spoke out against blind partisanship and people huddling only with those whose politics they agreed with, saying: “We have to acknowledge that our opponents might be making good points.” This is the same man who, in 2009, ordered the Republicans to sit down, shut up and get out of his way.
When he went on to sing the praises of a free press, it had apparently slipped his mind that he had attempted to banish Fox News from the White House press conferences.
I happen to love the arias of Puccini even though I have no idea what is being sung in Italian. When I listen to Obama speechify, I get the feeling he also doesn’t know what the words mean, but that he is so enchanted by the sound of his own voice, he doesn’t care. Otherwise, how could the man, who has spent the past eight years ignoring the Constitution’s limitations on the executive branch, possibly bring himself to state: “Our Constitution is a beautiful, wonderful document”?
Because Obama has become so accustomed to overusing “I,” “me” and “my” in his speeches, it came as something of a shock when he began blowing verbal kisses to the likes of Joe Biden (“My brother”), his staff (“You helped save the world”) and Michelle (“You’ve made me proud, and you’ve made this country proud”). I think if I had worked on his speech, I might have avoided using the word “proud,” as it was so likely to remind people that eight years ago, she admitted she had never been proud of America until her hubby beat out Hillary Clinton to garner the nomination.
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The biggest shock of the evening came when he told his daughters how much he loved and admired them, but the cameras clearly showed us, though possibly not her father, that only Malia was in attendance. As a result, the next day, social media was abuzz about Sasha’s absence. Not since America wondered where Waldo was lurking and where Jimmy Hoffa was buried had a question so captured America’s imagination quite as much as: Where was Sasha?
When my wife Yvonne asked me that very question, I suggested she might have stayed in D.C. to bone up for a high school exam. But once I heard Barack Obama state that was in fact the reason, I immediately changed my mind. I now suspect that like most 17-year-olds, she took advantage of her parents and kid sister being out of town to invite her friends over to break open the liquor cabinet and party.
Obama ended his overlong address by saying: “Yes we can, and yes we did.” It seemed like an odd conclusion unless he was responding to the question: “Did you intentionally set out to weaken America by selling us out to our enemies and betraying our allies?”
I believe that millions of us discovered to our chagrin how unwise it was to elect a person whose previous occupation was as a community agitator to be the commander in chief. But you can’t always count on someone making it quite that obvious that he is unsuited to the office. So I have come up with another tip-off. If someone was brought up in Indonesia and then proceeded to move to Hawaii, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Cambridge and finally, Washington, D.C., never even pausing in a place not dominated by the alt-left, you might wish to vote for someone else. Perhaps – dare I say it? – even anyone else!
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