Monday, June 7, 2010

Personal Asides: Regret Helen Thomas was Shut Up by Hearst….Obama Has Never Spoken—not Once—to the CEO of BP: How that for Hands On?

                                                       Feast of St. Robert of Newminister*
   

                                         Helen Thomas.
        That 90-year-old old crustacean Helen Thomas whom Jan Schakowsky, the Dragon Lady of the Left, finds “awesome” has just pronounced that the Jews “ought to get the hell out of Israel” and go back to Poland or Germany or wherever the hell they originally came from because Palestine is not their country.  But she shouldn’t have been fired by Hearst.  At ninety she is the reincarnation of Estelle Getty, the 4-foot-11-inch actress who played Bea Arthur’s mother in the TV series The Golden Girls(but who in reality was 15 months younger than Arthur and was made up to look older). .  Getty’s charm was that she too was supposed to be 90 and at that age was entitled to say the first thing that popped into her head—before she forgot it. 
        It’s nor their country?  Beginning in 1300 BC after their Exodus led by Moses?   The name Israel springs from the 12 tribes derived from the 12 tribes that formed the nation.  IN modern times the Jews have maintained a constant presence on the land, the land promised by God to the descendents of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Shut up the Lefty Helen Thomas and there might be a counter-move to shut up people on the right who in their senior years want to express themselves after many years of shutting up. That’s right: it includes me!   
                                        Sir Paul McCartney. 
         Don’t shut him up, either but his swipe at George Bush when Paul McCartney was entertaining at the White House should be treasured as vintage continental snobbery by the oh-so-veddy-veddy trendy Europeans who still adore Barack Obama as the Left here is falling off the boat: Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd.McCartney said it is refreshing to have a president who knows what a library is.  Get it?  George W. Bush was an ignoramus, never read a book.  Harvard MBA doesn’t count for anything. This goes in line with the age-old put-down of Republican presidents are dumb:  Dwight Eisenhower who led the greatest invasion in history…Richard Nixon (no, he wasn’t put down as dumb but evil)…Gerald Ford (supposedly dumber than a box of rocks but still a graduate of Yale law school)…Ronald Reagan, dumb actor who emotes only when he has a script and a director—but a successful two-term governor of California screen actor and union president…George H. W. Bush dumb preppie who was congressman, ambassador to the UN, director of the CIA, ambassador to China and vice president of the United States. and his son. 
        The sterling intellectuals were, of course, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter (remember him?), Bill Clinton and…tah-tah!...Barack Obama whom we don’t know much about because his papers are sealed up until the end of his term but of whom we are assured he is really veddy-veddy bright!  At least he has a winning smile.  
                                Obama On Top of it but--.  
           I never thought I would ever say this about a David Axelrod production but this Gulf Oil disaster p. r. campaign is a stinker.  They put out the word early that stemming the flow of oil is Job 1. Now we find out that Obama hasn’t talked to Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO directly since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded last April 20.  
       Hasn’t talked to him directly.  That’s really hands-on management, isn’t it?  And if you think that’s standard operating procedure for a White House involvement in a crisis, think again. This is inexcusable.  Think of John F. Kennedy…not my favorite but the contrast will do nicely here, thank you…in 1962 when a black student, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi where Governor Ross Barnett tried to block his admission…or in 1963 when Governor George Wallace of Alabama stood at the door of the state university to bar the admission of two black students.  JFK was on the phone, pacing in front of his desk, conferring with his brother, Nick Katzenbach the assistant AG.  
          You’d think for something this drastic, the Obama party circuit would have been canceled…but no.  His second musical party of the week was held yesterday at Ford’s Theatre featuring a host of notables who voted for Obama.  Can you imagine this happening at the Bush White House during Katrina? The Reagan White House during the Challenger Space disaster? 
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    *: St. Robert of Newminister [1100-1159]. A Cistercian abbot, born at Gargrave (North Yorkshire) and studied at the University of Paris, was ordained priest and became the rector in his home town. He joined the Benedictines at Whitby but became one of the founders of Fountain Abbey in 1132.  He was later chosen as Abbot of Newminister abbey. As with several holy men, he was charged with excessive familiarity with pious woman but was cleared fully of taint.

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