| [Spinster Mark Penn] made the ... suggestion to target Obama’s “lack of American roots”: "All of these articles about his [Senatorino Obama’s] boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. "Save it for 2050. "It also exposes a very strong weakness for him—his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president DURING A TIME OF WAR who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values. He told the people of NH yesterday he has a Kansas accent because his mother was from there. His mother lived in many states as far as we can tell—but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up. "How we could give some life to this contrast without turning negative: "Every speech should contain the line you [Senatrix Rodham-Clinton] were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century. AND TALK ABOUT THE BASIC BARGAIN as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back. "Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy Fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds." |
There is one obvious, though minor and technical, difficulty: the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EIB was unfortunately born a purty fur stretch from the geographical centre of the holy Homeland:
| John McCain was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone to naval officer John S. McCain, Jr. (1911–1981) and Roberta (Wright) McCain (b. 1912). At that time, the Panama Canal was under American control. |
As the Wikipædiatricians mention, J. Sidney’s natal turf was Homeland-controlled as of 29 August 1936. [1] There are, of course, no more strictly legal questions about J. Sidney’s U. S. citizenship than about B. Hussein’s. Yet in both cases there is undoubtedly a certain peripheral quality for Spinster Penn to avail himself of in the path of the Senatrix for New York and from the North Side of Chicago. [2]
This triviality may be slightly less trivial than it appears. The natal turf of JSM is not, after all, under Homeland control at the moment and has not been so for a number of years. A hostile analyst might point out how this detail fits in with the Commanderissimo’s personal contribution to our splendid triumph over North Vietnam in -- what year was it? Anyhow, it is notorious that JSM managed to get himself shot down. Why, he does not deny that rumor himself! No one, I trust, questions J. Sidney’s strenuous devotion to Success and Victory, but his devotion does appear to be offered only from afar in certain respects. [3]
Apart from that, the Commanderissimo can take over where the Senatrix left off so smoothly that the Osama-’n’-Biden forces might not even notice that the enemy is under new management apart from reading about the transition in the papers.
I have emphasized two high points of the McPenn Method, of which DURING A TIME OF WAR scarcely needs more discussion than it gets already. TALK ABOUT THE BASIC BARGAIN, on the other hand, borders on obscurity. What on Gore’s green earth is this "basic bargain" that the Commanderissimo and the Senatrix have agreed to, but the Senatorino has declined? Spinster Penn does not explain his own allusion, and neither does the journalist I here follow, one Joshua Green employed by the Atlantic Monthly.
Mr. Green has systematically looted the Senatrix’s campaign headquarters and published his booty in more than two dozen different dribs and drabs. My pet google comes back numerous quotations of precisely the passage in need of elucidation but nothing that obviously tends to elucidate it. That negative result means that all the political scribblers must think they already know what The Basic Bargain™ is, in which case I suppose I know too. Or at least I know half of it, the protasis, the half that runs "If you work hard and obey the rules, . . . ." As to the apodosis, well, I seem never to have heard that clause spoken so clearly that it registered. In context, something like ". . . then you will get the President of the United States that you want." A swell deal THAT would be, if only one could find it! Worded that way, the Basic Bargain™ is merely ridiculous, but I am really at a loss to see how else to word it.
If one closes the shortest short circuit between the Basic Bargain™ (in the McPenn Spinster School recension) and the former Real World™ and says "If you work hard and obey the rules, then you DESERVE to get the President of the United States that you want," it stops being a bargain at all, it dissolves instantly into a mush of moralism. But 99.9% of the time that one comes across Basic Bargain™ fans, they are not discussing the Presidency of the U. S. A. In that case, though, one is stuck with a fortune cookie like "Work hard and obey the rules and then you will get what[ever it may be that] you deserve and want!" Princess Cassandra and Dr. Pangloss and Pollyanna and even Mrs. Eddy were gloomy grinches compared to anybody damnfool enough to buy that product!
Something funny is goin’ on here, and it smells funny with a whiff of that brand of narcissism and self-esteemism peculiar to Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City. I suspect the reason why I cannot remember the apodosis exactly is that the apodosis is an insinuation, a wink-wink-nod-nod, rather than anythin’ a Basic Bargain™ fan would ever care to put in writin’. In the case of the Commanderissimo and the Senatrix and the Senatorino, as spun by Master Mark Penn, a naked spellin’ of it out would, as I conjecture, yield "If you work hard and obey the rules, then you will at least be far better than Osama ’n’ Biden ’n’ their [exp. del.] supporters are."
Less restricted by context: "If you work hard and obey the rules, then you may pat yourself on the back in public ever after."
In the decent obscurity of an extinct language and an abandoned superstition: gratias ago Tibi quia non sum sicut ceteri hominum. [4]
___
[1] Though e-rudite, that mention may well be a mistake or misunderstanding, in that JSM’s claims to be accounted estadounidense do not repose themselves upon political control of the colony in question.
[2] "Hillary Diane Rodham was born at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois."
It appears that the Edgewater Hospital is located at 5700 N. Ashland St., about five miles south of the True Omphalos, which is, needless to say, one’s own birthplace.
It further appears, that like the Commanderissimo’s Canal Zone, the Senatrix’s Edgewater Hospital must be spoken of in the past tense.
¡Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume!
[3] Now, if I was to take up spinstering in the manner of the Mark Penn School, I’d suggest we suggest to Televisionland and the electorate something like this:
| "Cap’n M’Cain is a jinx and a Jonah. It is no fault of the man’s own that he happens to have two black thumbs, of course, and doubtless we would have lost control of the Canal Zone even if he had been born somewhere else. Similarly, we would no doubt have succeeded almost as well in Indochina if Cap’n M’Cain had been the holy Homeland’s very own Red Baron. Nevertheless, I ask you, my fellow Americans: would it be wise to elect such a person to lead us DURING A TIME OF WAR? Did not Napoleon say that luck is the most valuable attribute a general could be endowed with?" |
[4] Ev. sec. Luc. XVIII:11.
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