The Undercurrent

I have made no bones on this blog site that I am not a fan of Senator Barack Obama. There is no challenge. There is no argument. I don't trust the man. I don't think he will bring about the unspecified change, let alone a positive one. I fear his gross lack of experience. I have major fears about his background. I sense that he is the very slick politician that he claims he will remove from our national government.

Nowhere in that ever-increasing list of concerns will you see mention of his race or ethnicity. Because, indeed, while I have referred to him as Ba-lack Osama or that they will change the name of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the Black House, his color and nationality is not really an issue to me. If there was a truly moderate African-American statesman with a canyon full of experience, I would gladly ask him or her to come forward.

But there isn't. What we have is Barack Obama, who is essentially flashing his permanent hall pass all the way to the most powerful job in the world.

The groundswell has begun. Hillary Clinton has been rendered as meaningless as last year's winner on "American Idol." You see people moving to Obama in droves as if he's giving out free cars like Oprah. From young people who don't even read newspapers to the teamsters who can't even read anything. And I sit and watch and wonder.

What am I missing?

Truly, Obama has said nothing to get himself in trouble. Realistically, he has said nothing period. Everybody knows we need change, so his mantra for that is really redundant. But, change how? No one knows.

Obama's like Professor Harold Hill in "The Music Man." Good looking, captivating, alluring. But, he's selling trombones to people with no lung capacity. They don't know what they want, except he's offering it. He's a walking, talking version of Vitamin Water.

Yet, I read and hear and wonder. How am I so grossly concerned and nobody else is? Why am I so incensed by the utterly audacious comment by his wife, who says she, for the very first time, is proud of America? How dare she?? So, her sudden burst of patriotic pride is linked to the fact that her husband is really two deep breaths from the Presidency. How about the fact that she lives in a country that allowed her to go to Princeton and then Harvard Law School? That she lives in a country that gives her incredible freedom and the ability to live in a two million dollar house? Was there no pride when the country banded together as one collective unit in the days following 9/11? Perhaps, she was busy that week and didn't notice. I fear her participation in the national fabric almost as much as her husband's.

Everybody claims Obama is the answer. But, to what question? I certainly have many. I wonder why someone so allegedly committed to change never votes in the Senate. Is that so he can keep his record clean and deny responsibility for anything? He's apparently only accountable to his own accountability. I muse over how Hillary Clinton, once the Democratic darling, has run out of campaign money, while Barack Obama apparently has no credit limit on his Diner's Club card. I think about his ties to a church led by a spiritual leader who openly announces his hate for white people. I look at his photo opportunities with frauds like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

And I'm endlessly perplexed that none of this bothers anybody else.

Or does it? While the media has given this sleazebag a lifetime "Get Out of Jail Free" card, I am at last hearing some distant rumbles. A few weeks back, I joked here that Obama was the beneficiary of a Manchurian Candidate-like conglomerate headed by Oprah. But, then, I heard somebody else say that. In complete seriousness. And then again. And then again. From people who are intelligent, well-meaning folks. I hear thoughts that Obama is backed by a Middle Eastern syndicate, and I scoff at it by suggesting that somebody has been watching a little too much "24." But, then, I keep hearing how the Middle Eastern community has been giving him a lot of money. And I think back to how no one could find a Middle Eastern cab driver on the streets of Manhattan one hour before the first plane hit on 9/11.

And I think and I wonder and I question. So, just for this one day, I write this with no jokes or snarky one-liners. Because, in all seriousness, I realize that America is in a very precarious moment in its history. And now we wait. Because, at some point, the conservatives and the Republicans will band together to do what they do best. Dig up dirt. And you just know that Obama has it somewhere in his past. They all do.

But, even after that expected damage, I am guessing that everyone keeps on cheering and clapping and embracing.

All for the sake of some still-to-be-determined change they can't even define.

Dinner last night: BLT Sandwich at Islands.