Hops, Skip, & A Jump To Illusions

My first thought when I heard about President Obama's idea to invite his pal "Skip" Gates and Sergeant James Crowley over to his crib for a bottle of suds and a teachable moment, I got all teary-eyed. From yawning. Literally. I was that bored.

Is he just talking, or does he really plan to do it? I may have wondered before I forgot the matter altogether, intent on removing lint from my clothes dryer's screeny trap, or on completion of some other banal chore infinitely more riveting than whatever might be going on in Barack Obama's head at any given time.

But then, as storms in teacups are sometimes wont to do, the matter picked up steam. Before we could say "Stupidity Czar," talk of the impending "beer summit" was all over the "news."

Beer Summit. Beer Plummet, more like. Just what we need in America ... additional meaningless chatter with an alcoholic anodyne as the primary lubricant.

I'll take it a step further. I don't think the President of the United States should consume alcohol at ALL while he is in office. It behooves the leader of the free world to keep the clearest head possible in case an emergency arises ... like, for example, North Korea deciding to nuke us, or our loony-bin "Science Czar" decreeing that today is the day to stealth-sterilize Americans via our potable water, to counteract what he believes is a crisis of overpopulation.

As much as people ignore them, are there not laws in America that prohibit drinking and driving? And although it pains me to say it, Barack Obama is driving the car. Ergo, he's got no business drinking. Period. Not when even a small degree of inebriation can affect a person's ability to form decisions that are of necessity made in those cramped, unforgiving inches between rocks and hard places.

He is welcome to celebrate the end of abstinence with a whole keg of beer in, oh, roughly three and a half years.

Speaking of abstaining, I thought it was telling and even marginally interesting that Joe Biden was deemed so fine and upstanding a gentleman as to merit an invitation to the al fresco brew-haha, but was the only one at the table who was not drinking real, actual brew. Instead, he quaffed "Buckler" -- a non-alcoholic beer. Which begs the question, is Joey the gaffe machine in recovery? Bueller? Anyone?

Or was our Veep the designated driver? Now there's a thought. God help us.

And wasn't it cute how Skip Gates and the gallant Officer Crowley showed up at the White House totally spit-shined and Brooks Brothers-ish in bespoke suits and ties, but Barry and Joey came to the party all, you know, shirt-sleeved and open-collared, with that men-at-work thing going on? No? You didn't think it was cute? You thought it was dumb and obvious?

So did I. Their dishabille also struck me as flippant, inappropriate, disrespectful, immature, and cocky.

And who besides me thought it was unfair that Lucia Whalen, the poor lady whose 911 call started the whole thing, and Leon Lashley, Sergeant Crowley's partner and witness to the Cambridge Doorstep Debacle, were not asked to the dance? If they had been, it would have been three-on-three; instead, it was three-on-one. Because James Crowley was most definitely on his own out there. He got beer, but no backup.

Although one of his favorite oratorical crutches is "Let me be clear," rather than clarifying, he obfuscates.

And did you notice who had the honor of traversing the manicured emerald expanse of tall fescue to serve the carefully-calibrated libations to the four newly-minted drinking buddies? A very white man, wearing a very serious suit and tie, shod in shiny wingtips. An all-American Caucasian male ingenue who could double for a third-year law clerk at Akin Gump. I wonder how long Rahm Emanuel and his minions in the Left Wing dithered over that critical casting decision? Because it couldn't be a black man or woman, surely, waiting on table at the White House with cameras clicking.

The aforementioned Sergeant Lashley, the black officer who accompanied Sergeant Crowley to Mr. Gates's domicile on the night that will live in infamy, has graciously and consistently defended his partner's actions. For insisting that his fellow officer acted with the utmost professionalism, he has been called "Uncle Tom" by blacks in his community. So it simply wouldn't do to have someone channeling Uncle Ben tray and tote the beer during an ad hoc racial sensitivity seminar.

Al Sharpton, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, and for all I know Aunt Jemima, might have suffered a collective apoplexy -- and the ACLU and NAACP would no doubt have swooped in with all flags flying -- if that had been the case. And it's a good thing they chose to serve humble peanuts with the beer -- rather than wings, for example -- or PeTA would have squeezed onto the bandwagon, crusading for the rights of poultry rendered wingless on the altar of racial profiling.

This next point might qualify as my sprinting down a rabbit trail, but for the sake of discussion, does anyone believe that all of the folks who do the washing and cleaning and cooking below stairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are white? I haven't done a FOIA request but my educated guess is that they are primarily a black demographic. My guess is also that they have some of the most coveted jobs with some of the best salaries and benefits in America. Very prestigious, wouldn't you say, to be tasked with washing the President's underwear, or scrubbing away at his bathtub ring? I don't imagine Barack Obama cares if it's black folks doing the laundry, as long as he has clean socks every morning and they don't have to walk across a bridge in the afternoon.

Back in January, the first time the fledgling President caught a ride on Air Force One, after getting situated he verbalized his desire for a snack. Guess who came running to fulfill his every gustatory wish? A black man. Barack Obama detailed his finicky hamburger order -- on camera -- to a black man who, I'll bet you a faded Nobama bumpersticker, wouldn't trade jobs with Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., even if a case of Buckler were thrown in to sweeten the deal.

And yet when a white man simply does his job, and in doing so ruffles the feathers of a self-important black man who has America's first black president on speed dial, the entire world is treated to a ringside seat as the white man is accused of picking on the black guy. The President of the United States stops what he's doing to call a presser and uses the word "stupidly" in reference to the white man ... a condescendingly disparaging comment I'm confident he never would have made in an identical scenario in which the races of the parties were reversed.

Like lead weights attached to a butterfly's wings, Barack Obama's attempts at leadership are fatally attenuated by his pernicious liberalism, his obsession with white reparations, and his ultra-radical political agenda. When placed in situations requiring diplomacy -- and humility, without which no diplomacy is genuine -- although one of his favorite oratorical crutches is "Let me be clear," rather than clarifying, he obfuscates.

One thing is inescapably clear: the President does not comprehend the amount of transparency that is required to finesse a raw ideology into a functional continuum. And when you begin with a flawed concept -- i.e., that one segment of society is entitled to special treatment by another segment of society simply because of their skin color -- you've shot yourself in the foot before the race begins.

There exists an illusion of strength and purpose in the Obama administration, but sadly, lofty ideals that should sparkle with crystalline calm are muddied by the spurious posturing of the man in charge. The symbolism of sitting down for a beer with two guys of different races who had an embarrassingly public scrap does not mitigate the substance of the larger problem: racism in America, always a simmering pot, is in imminent danger of boiling over due to a symbolically-black president whose own racism will always be a hindrance to his credibility.