Teflon Don
(Excerpt from Patriot Post)
Friday Digest – Vol. 08 No. 51
Obama and Clinton have similar histories of shattered childhoods, of tragedy piled on misfortune, but Barack had the forethought to pre-empt some questions about his life by framing it in a couple of biographies. For example, the issue of his drug abuse: in “Dreams From My Father,” an early biographical sketch of his broken family, he described himself as a “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. … I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind. … We were always playing on the white man’s court.”
More specifically, he wrote, “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though.”
So, are we to gather that Obama, truly a victim of circumstances for which he deserves our compassion, inhaled, but exercised enough self-restraint to refrain from smack (heroin)?
I know plenty of folks of all colors and stripes that were subject to appalling abuse as children, but who, by the grace of God, rose above those circumstances. But Barack Obama is still mired in the chaos of his youth.
(snip)
On the subject of favors, in a September interview, talkinghead Katie Couric tossed Obama one of many softballs: “What is your favorite movie of all time?”
His answer may provide some insight into his own psyche and current “Chicago problem”: “The Godfather,” said Obama, adding that his favorite scene “has to be, the opening where the caretaker comes in and, you know, Marlon Brando is sitting there and he’s saying ‘you disrespected me.’ You know, ‘and now you want a favor.’ It sets the tone for the whole movie. I mean there’s this combination of old world gentility and ritual, with this savagery underneath. It’s all about family, so it’s a great movie.”
Ah yes, it’s all about “family, and the savagery underneath.”
Is it possible that the president-elect has been battered and fried in corruption for so long that he doesn’t have the moral authority or fortitude to condemn Blagojevich? Or is it that Obama has enough residual virtue left to sense that denouncing Blago would constitute an act of hypocrisy greater than even he could stomach?
(snip)
However, given Barack Obama’s ability rinse clean from a life of antisocial behavior, his association with miscreants, his close affiliation with corrupt politicos, etc., he has discovered something better than Teflon.
(snip)
History is littered with examples of tragic eras when economic and political upheaval led weaker men to anoint a savior from among their ranks. The tyranny and suffering that inevitably followed cost them, and succeeding generations, far more than their original misfortunes.