Obama Yo Mama

The news that Osama bin Laden has been killed puts to rest a full decade of unresolved blood lust and retribution following the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. It should even give President Obama's administration some much-needed cred on the world stage, given that he accomplished what Bush swore to do but left dangling, like the ending of that children's book about the goats he was reading the day of the attacks. Yet somehow the right wing will try to wrestle this success away from the president; just take a look at the news crawl on Fox News last night when the announcement was made.

Don't kid yourself into believing "OBAMA BIN LADEN DEAD" is a typo. It's emblematic of the childish schoolyard antics that Fox news pundits engage in every day, the type that add nothing of value to the dialog and serve to link the president with our most despised enemy, even when the news is that he's responsible for putting that enemy out of commission. It's like when that bleached cadaver Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "fag" simply to demean his run for office. John Edwards may be many things -- a philanderer, a callous husband, a lousy father, and a public figure with shocklingly poor judgment -- but a homosexual he is not. I'd wager his career would be in better shape if he were.

It seems that every few administrations, when a Democractic leader inherits the mess a Republican president leaves behind on his way out of the Oval office, we spend all our energy defusing the lies and snipes of the Coulters and Palins and Cheneys, somehow never hitting back. Then suddenly it's too late, and we're in for another four or eight years of Republican puffery and obfuscation. It would be nice if now we could put the suspicions about Obama's loyalties and citizenship behind us, and actually accomplish something at a time when people desperately need jobs, social programs, and health care.

Cheap Shots

Earlier this week, conservative columnist Debra Saunders slammed President Obama for being photographed during his Martha's Vineyard vacation riding a bicycle while wearing a helmet.

Granted, the pose and the helmet did make him look something of a dork. But imagine the firestorm of public outcry that would have erupted if he were photographed without a helmet -- you'd hear criticism ranging from his obligation to serve as a role model to children all the way to his responsibility of protecting the brain that holds the codes that trigger nuclear attack.

This is a familiar tactic of the GOP, to besmirch the masculinity of a Democratic politician or candidate. It wasn't so long ago that the abhorrent Ann Coulter called former Senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards a "faggot." (This was before the revelation that an affair with an aide had resulted in an illegitimate child.) Coulter, who inexplicably makes morning show TV appearances attired in a cocktail mini as though she were some sort of Beltway hooker, eventually retracted, saying she hadn't meant Edwards was gay, she was just using the word as a schoolyard taunt. Right. This is the same woman who once stated that she found Dick Cheney's crooked corporate raider leer "sexy," so it's obvious that it's power, not sex appeal, that floats her boat.

Oddly, the same people who are so quick to paint Democratic leaders as friends of Dorothy make a practice of branding female leaders like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer as "bitches." What successful women in politics or, for that matter, the business world haven't been recipients of that charge?

Sarah Palin is the casebook pro at this maneuver, sneering at peers who actually read newspapers and don't shoot wolves from pontoon planes. It's like the Republicans are the fat redheaded bullies of the schoolyard calling out rude names at the smart kids, and the Democrats' response is always to just tuck their books under their arms and head for French lab.

It's not like I want to see the President of the United States harpooning whales like Soviet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (as it turns out, he was only assisting scientists in obtaining skin samples, a fact that conservatives like Saunders omit when comparing the two world leaders). But it would be helpful to his image, and to the political future of our country, if he used his intelligence and charm to rebuke criticism in a way that was more forceful and self-assured. Bullies don't deserve kid glove treatment.