A headline from Reuters confirms what we all know: “Barack Obama is revelling in presidential power and influence unseen in Washington for decades.”
Since we’re rolling back the clock on quaint traditions like democracy and free speech, I’d like to suggest we consider resuscitating an office that flourished in the age of monarchs. I mean the office of court jester.
Now that we have a President who requires instant acquiescence in his schemes to spend your money and realize his socialist dream, isn’t it prudent to assure that there is at least one person installed in the corridors of power who can whisper home truths into the President’s ear?
In the age of monarchy, indulging in free speech, especially on matters political, was a dangerous pastime. Kings, emperors, and others who proclaim that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” who actually believe that, with their ascension “the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” — such folks have a serious problem with hubris, not to say narcissism.
As anyone who can pronounce “Aeschylus” knows, hubris is followed regularly by nemesis, and it was to forestall that eventuality that monarchs of yore instituted the office of the court jester or fool. Here was one person allowed to speak his mind, to impart unpalatable truths to the sovereign. Queen Elizabeth (the first, not the one hugged by Michelle Obama) even rebuked her fool for not being sufficiently candid. (It was a narrow path, though, that the fool had to walk: Lear threatened to whip his fool for speaking free.)
The White House has not yet gotten around to announcing the position. That’s hardly surprising. They’ve been awfully busy these last 100 days and more, what with all that “spreading the wealth around,” taking over the auto industry, demonizing conservatives, setting terrorists free, plotting to nationalize health care, conspiring to impoverish us all not just by raising taxes but also through the ruinous cap-and-trade proposal that will cost the average household about $3,100 a year.
Obama is big on “mandatory” volunteerism and I am happy to do a stint here volunteering as an unpaid human resource consultant to the White House. Would-be jesters take note: you’ll have to supply your own motley. But anyone with an active sense of humor, common sense, and pragmatic political instincts is invited to apply for the position of White House Court Jester and Fool. Apply to: Mr. Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Fools, the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington. D.C.
PJM Home
The New Criterion
The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art
Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse
Art’s Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity
Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age
Tenured Radicals, NEW, EXPANDED EDITION FALL 2008! How Politics has Corrupted our Higher Education
Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts
The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
Against the Idols of the Age
Lengthened Shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty-First Century
The Survival of Culture: Permanent Values in a Virtual Age
Physics and Politics, by Walter Bagehot, edited with an
Introduction by Roger Kimball
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
29 Comments
1. Peter Leavitt:In America in the long run the best jester is the American people who sooner or later catch on to frauds. St. Obama is a colossal empty suit of little experience and less accomplishment . Hubris followed by nemesis indeed.
May 3, 2009 - 10:54 am 2. Andrew_M_Garland:Obama Does Not Govern Alone. There is much discussion about Obama running things, as if he is alone at the top directing the government. He couldn’t do these things without the support of the Democratic Congress and Senate.
In fact, much of “Obama’s” legislation is drafted by his party in Congress. That is why there were 8,000 earmarks in the recent appropriations bill. Democrats have been a majority in the House and Senate since 2007. They delayed presenting the appropriations bill to the Bush administration, so they could present it to a then-likely Democratic president Obama. In this way, the 2009 budget is a creation of the Democratic congress, not the legacy of Bush.
Almost all Democrats in Congress agree with Obama, or are willing to go along to share the spoils. Remember that Obama is getting his way only because he is supported by a his party in Congress. Congress is up for election in 18 months. Share the blame, especially when inflation, taxes, and stubborn unemployment become clear.
May 3, 2009 - 1:45 pm 3. Instapundit » Blog Archive » ROGER KIMBALL: The White House Needs a Court Jester. I thought that was why we had Joe Biden….:A Tested Stimulus Plan
The housing economic crisis is the result of our previous stimulus plans. How do we like it?
[...] KIMBALL: The White House Needs a Court Jester. I thought that was why we had Joe [...]
May 3, 2009 - 6:47 pm 4. KimW:Oh, to have Elizabeth 1 as the President. She who gave the order to Sir Francis Drake to harrass the Spanish ships, “within the Havens themselves”.
May 3, 2009 - 6:53 pm 5. F:Who needs a court jester when we have a whole Congess full of clowns? F
May 3, 2009 - 7:06 pm 6. frege:I thought that was what Gibbs was for.
May 3, 2009 - 7:31 pm 7. Saint Patton:Read the fine print in the employment contract before taking the job as White House Jester; King Obama isn’t the sort to take naysayers and dissenters lightly.
Your job will be to please him, nothing else. If you stray from that path, you will probably find yourself the subject of a media hit job as well as the focus of an IRS investigative team.
May 3, 2009 - 7:46 pm 8. Dick Stanley:I think the position has already been filled. It would be very difficult to top Biden.
May 3, 2009 - 7:50 pm 9. TmjUtah:If the enormity of Obama’s motives make it through media to the heart of the American public… before we collapse … rank and file Democrats’ behaviour in trying to run away from him will make Arlen Specter look like a prinicpled politician.
We’ve never elected a big “C” communist. Especially not one with his own stable of wanna-be mafiosos.
May 3, 2009 - 9:37 pm 10. Michael Lonie:After the Swiss had smashed the army of Duke Charles of Burgundy he was riding along dejectedly with his fool. The jester remembered the Duke’s love of reading about ancient history and his close attention to the accounts of ancient battles, hoping to learn things applicable to building a modern army for the 1470s.
“Well, my Lord,” the jester said, “we’ve certainly been out-Hannibaled today.”
May 3, 2009 - 10:23 pm 11. Sandy Clarke:Soros’s teleprompter puppet is the court jester. Soros, is a Hungarian, but is wrongly spelled. The real spelling is Saros, which means “covered in mud” in Hungarian…
May 3, 2009 - 10:54 pm 12. Andre Hattingh:So Andrew, what are you saying? When the Democratic Congress has failed in its constitutional task to ‘advise and consent’the ego in a suit will shrug off his disasters by saying “I was only following orders”? to a chorus of Sieg Heils!
May 4, 2009 - 12:28 am 13. Pajamas Media » Job Opening At the White House:[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]
May 4, 2009 - 1:54 am 14. BPT (Australia):What makes me sick is how your lapdog TV reporters stand for Obama, whereas they often sat for Bush. A narcissist needs enablers, of course,
May 4, 2009 - 4:55 am 15. Jerry:Not another position, but a replacement for President Obama:
May I humbly suggest that Sheila Bair, head of FDIC, would make a worthy opponent in 2012. Her views are fact-based, her stage-presence is superior to that of President Obama, her intellectual achievements and personal history are available to public view, she has run for office in the past, her values are mainstream, and she has a grasp of economic issues that is so advanced that she leaves Obama in the dust. She can win, becoming America’s first female American president.
Is there someone on this blog who can press the Republican power to consider her as a realistic option?
May 4, 2009 - 5:09 am 16. Parabellum:Michelle’s already dressed for the job: http://sidemeat.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/if-sarah-palin-wore-this/
May 4, 2009 - 6:06 am 17. jimpres:Well folks we will have to sit and take all the changes and new taxes by whatever means. He will be in office until 2012. If the people that voted for him are still slobbering over him and he has passed amnesty he will win again.
May 4, 2009 - 8:12 am 18. Sebastian Shaw:All the posturing is for power and to win again.
Gibbs will eventually be thrown under the bus for someone even more incompetent.
May 4, 2009 - 8:18 am 19. Sebastian Shaw:The Blue Dog Democrats will break from Obama since many are up for re-election; this will be a thorn in Obama’s Socialist agenda, although Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid will attempt to force them to comply. They are already in trouble for voting for Porkulus & the infamous budget. The Democrats are passed the point of overreaching & are already on a precipice, dangling in the wind. The problem is the Democrats are not AWARE they have overreached.
May 4, 2009 - 8:21 am 20. BCK:How sad it is for true Americans that discussions like this need to be made. Wake up repubs in Congress and the Senate! Time to grow some b*lls, the American people will back you up in total gratitude and reward you well by allowing you to continue in Office. Otherwise, you are OUT!
May 4, 2009 - 10:12 am 21. Ellen K:Term Limits and no more voting yourselves raises AND absolutely no lifelong Benefits. Live like the REAL Americans live.
We the People will continue to not be lead like stupid sheep.
TOTUS needs to be stopped from taking over Banks, Corporations, etc.
Pelosi, Reid, Frank and the rest need to be investigated. They are the threat to our once great country!
I thought that was Biden’s job.
May 4, 2009 - 10:59 am 22. Ellen K:Isn’t the term “mandatory volunteerism” an oxymoron? Like jumbo shrimp? Or military intelligence? Or Joe Biden?
May 4, 2009 - 11:00 am 23. seansarto:“manadatory overtime”
May 4, 2009 - 1:56 pm 24. tanstaafl:“at will”
But anyone with an active sense of humor, common sense, and pragmatic political instincts is invited to apply for the position of White House Court Jester and Fool.
One of the characteristics of today’s Modern Liberal/Progressive (from Hillary on up, or down) is a complete lack of a sense of humor.*
(*don’t be fooled by Hillary’s maniacal laugh, most recently in evidence as she was telling some Senate committee that she doesn’t have much use for Dick Cheney)
At about age 3, Libruls discarded common sense as a useful means of looking at anything, choosing, instead, to replace it with endless and decades’ long bouts of verbiage thrown at any subject. (that way, the “problem” never goes away and they can secure the base by constant references to said base’s plight…at the hands of some evil Republican who doesn’t “care” about them)
May 4, 2009 - 5:14 pm 25. eor:Re. Comments about Biden. I still believe he got the job because noone else would take it. Also–I’m waiting to see if Hillary or Bill will be named to the Supremes—–
May 5, 2009 - 7:18 pm 26. Sebastian Shaw:Joe Biden is an idiot, a moron, a boob, & an egoist willing to lie to make himself look better; therefore, Obama couldn’t have picked a better man in the #2 slot. President Obama is all of these things & more with or without his teleprompter(s).
Joe Biden is the sludge you find in drain pipes.
May 6, 2009 - 3:37 pm 27. nick:President Obama is a smooth character but as the past 100 days have shown us he isn’t as clever as he thinks he is.
Perhaps when you folks throw him out on his ear four years hence he can work on a new book.
I have a working title:
“The Mendacity of a Dope”
May 7, 2009 - 1:02 pm 28. Fausta’s Blog » Blog Archive » To “The Obama Brand”, let’s add a court jester:[...] the more timely to take up Roger Kimball’s proposal for a new position at the White House: Since we’re rolling back the clock on quaint traditions like democracy and free speech, I’d [...]
May 15, 2009 - 2:27 pm 29. HOWIE DOON:The jester need not expound, the joke is in the white house.
Aug 6, 2009 - 5:31 pm