Over at The Corner, a fellow calling himself David Kahane (a pen name of a Hollywood writer) posts this splendid exercise in hypothetical prestidigitation. Watch in amazement as obvious counter-factuals turn out to boast the blunt currency of quotidian reality. You scale the heights of subjunctive fantasy only to find yourself delivered to the stern threshold of the indicative. The barely possible transfigures itself into the ineluctable. “What if” becomes “of course.” Check it out:
What if a guy nobody’s ever heard of, from Hawaii no less, with a Muslim African father and a Muslim Indonesian stepfather and a mom from Kansas named Stanley inexplicably glides from Punahou to a short sheep-dip at Occidental to the Frankfurt School’s favorite Ivy League haunt, Columbia, to Harvard Law? What if he’s such an arrogant, aloof suckup of no particular ability or accomplishment that his fellow students openly ridicule him with the invention of the “Obamamometer,” which measures epic brown-nosing on a scale from one to ten? What if he’s blissfully unaware of his own deficiencies, and instead comes to believe that he’s earned everything that’s come his way — or ever will?
Sound incredible? Read on:
And what if this guy – let’s give him a patently implausible, comically grandiose name like “Barack Hussein Obama II” – moves to . . . New Jersey? Arkansas? No, I’ve got it – Chicago, Ill. – falls in with . . . wait for it . . . former domestic-terrorist fugitives, adopts a racist pastor to burnish his hitherto-nonexistent “Christian” credentials, and becomes, say, a state senator? Even better: a U.S. senator! And what if he gets a guy named . . . Jake Lingle, yes, that’s it! – to use his Chicago Tribune connections to destroy not one but two opponents, both over divorce records! And what if this obscure senator, after less than two years in Washington and with a grand total of one speech to his credit, decides to run for president on a platform of “fundamental change?”
What if his opponent is a creaky, cranky, cantankerous old fart who hates his own party and then – I know this bit is unbelievable but we’re still spit-balling here – out of the blue selects some dizzy moose-hunting dame from . . . Alaska! . . . to be his running mate? And what if she electrifies his doomed candidacy (heck, even he doesn’t really seem to want to win) and sends him vaulting into the lead in the polls? What if he’s on the verge of actually defeating BO2 when Barry’s media pals lay down some serious covering fire and then, mysteriously, the booming U.S. economy collapses almost overnight as George Soros strokes a white cat and chuckles menacingly?
Read the rest of this comic tragedy here.
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12 Comments
1. biblio44:“Watch in amazement as obvious counter-factuals turn out to boast the blunt currency of quotidian reality. You scale the heights of subjunctive fantasy only to find yourself delivered to the stern threshold of the indicative.”
Omigod! You ARE Dr. Irwin Corey! Roger, Roger, this peace prize has left you completely batty.
Oct 10, 2009 - 9:13 am 2. Allende:Can we see his transcripts?
Oct 10, 2009 - 10:34 am 3. Gaffe Prices:Ah, you’re just makin’ all that stuff up.
except the part about McCain forfeiting the election, I’ll give you that one.
Oct 10, 2009 - 11:30 am 4. Zhombre:Welcome to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Farce, where the President of Farce receives a Farce of Peace award for his farcical accomplishments from the Complacent Pickled Herring-eating Social Democrats and the farcical printing of inflated Farce Money buoys the failing economy in a Farce Recovery. Enjoy. And remember — it’s a farce. Except for the part where people actually bleed, suffer and go broke.
Oct 10, 2009 - 9:17 pm 5. Patti:Do we deserve this ? Apparently so.
A reminder of why conservatives won’t get a leg up any time soon.They were so brow-beaten that they left the public to carry their water for them-no fight in them atall.
Oct 11, 2009 - 9:25 am 6. Gaffe Prices:Well, I’m sure we’ll all remember just where we were and what we were doing the moment we heard the news that the *new* bold Nobel Peace Bribe was awarded to his Heinous. National Policy available to the highest bidder, its the social darwin a-way. A carpet bombing of *new* in-your-face, impeachable offenses. Too many to count, and just where to start?
You’ll be laughed out of congress anyway, by the big boys and girls who see no bill, read no bill, write no bill. Careful, there’s a rubber stamp with your name on it.
Oct 11, 2009 - 12:56 pm 7. David Thomson:David Kahane overlooked something very important: Barack Obama’s two allegedly self authored books that made him famous. There is zero evidence that he previously ever wrote anything substantial. And yet, one day Dreams From My Father appeared. It turned him into an overnight sensation. He was praised for his superb prose. What is the chance of this occurring in the real world? Is it even one percent? I doubt it very much. Obama is a guy who did not even author a single piece for a law journal under his editorship. There is still no article in any major publication with his name on it. Something seems very fishy.
Oct 11, 2009 - 5:02 pm 8. andy creed:HUM! I’m wondering if the light has gone on for all those dim wits that voted him into office?
Oct 11, 2009 - 9:25 pm 9. Professor Guvinoff:Reality surpasses fiction? Not good enough! Now fiction is trying to catch up with the old reality that had ceded to game to fiction in Act one. I’m afraid to wake up.
Oct 11, 2009 - 9:54 pm 10. Raymond Barry:You know, I’m thinking about nominating myself for the Nobel Prize for literature. Now, it;s true I’ve never written anything, but I could have. Sure could use the money.
Oct 13, 2009 - 8:18 am 11. G.Clark:I agree with the basic idea of the piece: it is absolutely preposterous, or rather it should be, that BHO is POTUS.
However, the notion that the US economy was ‘booming’ is ridiculous.
Oct 13, 2009 - 5:53 pm 12. Bob Miller:G. Clark’s comment above made an interesting point about the economy. If it hadn’t been resting on shaky loans, weird derivatives, mindless consumer spending, Ponzi scams, etc., even the evil Soros could not have tipped it over.
Oct 19, 2009 - 1:14 pm