An Apology to Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President,

You do not know me, but I feel compelled to write you a personal message. Whilst I realize you probably do not read this website, I understand that blogging is an increasingly effective way of contacting you, as recently demonstrated by Bristol Palin. I wish to follow her fine example.

Bristol Palin is a strong and independent woman who is genuinely concerned about the current state of public discourse. So am I, apart from the bit about being a woman. I, like Bristol, have noticed the disturbing rise of left-wing comedians who pollute mainstream American media with their conspiracy to provoke laughter. This is routinely, and viciously, targeted at people who the comedians regard as stupid, such as Bristol Palin, her mom, George W. Bush, and other people associated with the Republican Party. Their so-called comedy often involves spewing hurtful lies, half-truths, and complete-truths under the pretext that the audience will find them hilarious. But beneath the side-splitting guffaws and tears of joy, and well within their skulls, the audience’s minds are being subjected to a form of indoctrination more insidious than that perpetrated by the communists in the 1950’s, and even more effective than that which Jane Fonda received from the Vietcong. I hope that by writing now, I can encourage you to curtail the antics of these terrifyingly amusing propagandists.

Like many Americans, even though I am not an American, I share Bristol Palin’s concerns about the unchecked media power of comedians. Gone are the happy days when comedians would implore listeners to ‘take my wife’, which is unsurprising given the breakdown of traditional family values. Bristol Palin is, after all, quite an expert on the breakdown of family values, speaking with the kind of authority you only get from personal experience of breaking a lot of those values. Because she is a recognized authority, I struggle to understand why anyone would question her integrity, but some left-wing comedians will stoop that low. The verbal assaults of these comedians debase not only Bristol Palin, but all of us, and they have a profound influence on the weak-minded. Take, for example, the fool who thought it would be fun to identify political rivals using a map marked with crosshairs, and then denied any responsibility when one of those rivals was shot. Then, when she received criticism, the jester got mixed-up about the freedom to express righteous outrage, calling it a ‘blood libel’. Oh, wait, no, it was Brisol’s mom that did that. Sorry about the confusion. Anyway, there are many other examples of comedians lowering the standards for public behaviour. Consider the cult TV personality that keeps on using the absurdist phrase ‘death panel’ when describing the workings of your healthcare reforms. Oops. Sorry, that was Bristol’s mom again. Anyhow, the leftist fanatics, if they are not silenced, will inevitably set the USA against its allies, like South Korea, by voicing support for enemies, like North Korea. Oh, wait, that was Bristol’s mom again. Never mind.

To be honest, between Stephen Colbert and Herman Cain and Al Franken, I get comedians and politicians muddled, just like Sarah Palin muddling up North and South Korea. Some of these modern comedians are very snide, which makes it hard to tell if they are being serious. I prefer old-fashioned comics who go for the all-out belly laughs. I particularly loved Newt Gingrich’s skit promising a moon colony that will reduce government debt and give rise to a 51st state. It was hilarious! Gingrich reminds me of Jackie Gleason: ‘straight to the moon!’ Oh, no, I got confused again. Gingrich was being serious. Sorry.

The concerns of Bristol Palin are shared by many people who feel you instigated a war on women. From where I stand, which is a long way away, their anger is real, and not just born of a desperate realization that your supposedly woman-friendly policies are popular with most women voters. Indeed, your liberal backers seem to have persuaded you to enter into perpetual war on all fronts, which makes me wonder if you really want to get re-elected. In addition to the war on women, recent accounts suggest you are fighting a war on religion, pursuing a war on liberty, starting a war on whistleblowers and continuing the previous administration’s war on terror. However, you seem to lack sufficient appetite for the necessary ‘war on Iran’. I use inverted commas to highlight how attacking Iran would only be a war in a metaphorical sense, unlike the other wars I referred to. Real wars require two sides, whilst I understand that a war on Iran would only be a one-sided affair. As espoused by some of the leading foreign policy experts in the Republican Party, if you order the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities, then Iran will respond by feeling a bit miffed, shaking their fists in a Westerly direction, then shrugging their shoulders and entering a new era of peace and enlightenment. Or something like that. Anyhow, examining your pro-war record, it is clear that the only war you have completely shunned is the war on war itself. Was prosecuting this war not a condition of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize? Several years on, I still await the war on war. If you are not serious about fighting it, then you should return your peace prize and apologize to the Nobel committee.

On the topic of apologies, it is clear that everyone agrees that you should apologize a lot more often, for a lot more things, except for those times when you do apologize but should definitely not have apologized. Iran thinks you should apologize to Iran for letting a hi-tech drone crash on their land so it can be pulled apart by their scientists. Newt Gingrich, who is not a comedian, despite what I wrote earlier, thinks you should apologize for a joke told by Robert De Niro, who is also not a comedian. Dick Cheney thinks you should apologize to the George W. Bush administration (and hence to him) for running an administration that is not sufficiently dissimilar to theirs. Other people think you should apologize to Pakistan, or to Mexico’s President, or to half of America or to the whole of America. Going further, I typed ‘Obama should apologize’ into Google, and it came back with 969,000 hits. If we allow a modest fifteen seconds of contrition for each web instruction to be sorry, you should spend the next 168 days engaging in continuous apology. If you also wanted to sleep from time to time, the serial apologies would take up the remainder of your term in office, at which point you should finally bow out with an apology for wasting so much time apologizing, when you should have been getting on with the job of being President.

I hope you see that my plea is not the usual incoherent rhetoric typically employed by people I disagree with. In fact, we can all agree that my point of view is as well expressed as all the points made by all the people who agree with my point of view, except for those rare occasions when some of them fail to live up to our collective high standards by sliding down to the gutter standards of the bitter minority who disagree with us. However, it has to be reiterated that sliding down to the low standards of opponents is not much of a sin, as, by definition, our opponents are demons who rely on low standards to rationalize their nonsensical views, whilst people on our side are insightful saints who very rarely slip from their heavenly perches. Indeed, when people on our side behave badly, it can only be because our opponents behave so very badly all of the time.

With my goals now reiterated so clearly that arguing against me could only serve as proof of my interlocutor’s insincerity, let me remind you of two important passages from Bristol’s letter. First, she explains how she is waiting to hear about your commitment to improve the quality of public discourse:

“I’m a little surprised my phone hasn’t rung.”

And later, towards the end of her letter:

“I’m not even really expecting a call.”

Never have two truer and more mutually consistent things ever been written in a letter-cum-blog, especially as Bristol’s message was meant to chastise you for inconsistency and for engaging in political grandstanding. When I saw her words, I instantly appreciated the hidden subtext of Bristol’s plea: she wants more sincerity in public and political discourse, and she hopes you will lead the way, but she fears you will not. We can empathize with Bristol. Her mom is always working hard, being sincere, on the Fox network. For all her efforts to raise the standard of political rhetoric, Sarah Palin receives little reward beyond millions of dollars in pay and a continuing hope that she will be selected as the GOP’s presidential nominee without needing to engage in the dirty and corrupt process of actually campaigning for it. Sarah Palin’s tireless efforts need to be bolstered by you. You can do more than anyone else to increase sincerity in politics, and if you succeed, people might even stop asking you to apologize for things you did not do. It is with this hope in mind, the hope that we can strive to be more sincere than we have ever been before, that I must now apologize for this letter, even though it is not a letter, but actually a blog post. I sincerely apologize for any insincerity, whether real or imagined, in this letter, and I apologize not just on behalf of myself, but also on behalf of the whole human race that is currently living anywhere on earth (and also the moon too, just in case Newt has already landed), and on behalf of anyone who has ever lived in the past, and on behalf of anyone who will ever live in future. And I apologize not just to you, but to the aforementioned human race of the past, present and future. And with that sincere and universal apology, let us strive to bring an end to all insincere demands for unnecessary apologies. If you will lead, I pledge to support you, as we embark upon a brave new world where politicians are always sincere, and comedians are funny without ever making fun of anyone.

Yours faithfully (though it would be sincerely, if we had ever met),

Eric Priezkalns