ONE year ago this week, I stood shoulder-to-shoul der with thousands of tearful, hopeful Ameri cans and Oprah Winfrey in Chicago’s windswept Grant Park to witness the coming of a miraculous change: the Age of Obama.
I’m still waiting.
To say our youthful president has accomplished little during his first months in office is a gross exaggeration, it pains me to say. He has done virtually nothing.
In the Obama White House, arrogance, vanity and hesitation has replaced action. A level of suspicion unseen since the days of Richard Nixon flourishes at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Republicans who oppose government-run health care are lying enemies. Or lackeys for insurance companies.
Fox News Channel does not merely give voice to the loyal opposition. It’s the bogeyman.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
The Obama administration hit rock bottom on the day the president ignored a tattered economy and jetted off to Copenhagen with his buddy Oprah to help his hometown of Chicago secure the Olympics. The international community, to whom he’s bowed embarrassingly, laughed in his face.
This was quickly followed by a one-two punch of global humiliation, although Obama didn’t see it that way. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based on his empty portfolio of delays and dithering. On his inability to make a decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. His unfinished business in Iraq.
That he would dare accept such a ridiculous honor demonstrated to his many critics, and even some friends, that to Obama, it is better to be liked than to be respected. The conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer calls Obama’s masters the “vague, international community.” A lefty bunch that Obama takes pains to please but that may not even exist.
It’s time to get back to business.
As the average American worried about how to pay taxes and bills, Obama stubbornly pushes for his massive, socialist-style health-care program. He has pumped billions upon billions into various stimulus packages, and has declared economic victory, but I think it’s premature.
Obama, it seems, is severely misreading his people.
This country, with the exception of hard-core kooks on the coasts, is deeply conservative. Actually, even in the big cities that form his natural base, caution is key to understanding Americans.
We may like the notion of universal health care, but in reality, we don’t trust that the government can start the huge program from scratch without gross mismanagement, waste and fraud. You can yell all you like that the right is spreading “disinformation.”
Obama presented an appealing package when he came out of nowhere and won the highest office in the land. It’s true, he’s only been in office a short time. But if it took 410 days to build the Empire State Building, I think 365, including the transition, should be long enough to give shape to a presidency.
The good news is, it’s not too late.
Mr. President, do something.
Phillips’ firing falls short for gals of ESPN
As bounced ESPN analyst Steve Phillips goes off to sex-addiction rehab — a k a summer camp for the clinically horny — he leaves a legacy of burned babes at the jiggle factory he once called home.
Staffers poured out their hearts to me, describing a work atmosphere rank with sexual shenanigans aimed at the young, ambitious ladies who try to make careers at ESPN.
“I was mortified by the blatant sexism I encountered on a daily basis, and I often heard my coworkers joke that ESPN’s response to sexual harassment is a ‘week-long vacation,’ ” writes one who was hit on repeatedly. Phillips was initially suspended for a week for sexual high jinks, then got canned.
Another staffer says her “heart goes out” to Brooke Hundley, the temptress who went crackerjacks on Phillips and his family after he did her and then dumped her.
“Not only is her career effectively destroyed, her self-confidence and faith in one of the world’s most trusted and admired companies is shattered . . . I’m disgusted that Phillips can walk away with the simple suggestion that he is a ‘sex addict,’ ” this staffer said.
It’s high time ESPN cleaned house.
VILE VIDAL PRO-‘LANSKI
Novelist and deep thinker Gore Vidal called the 13-year-old child who was drugged and sodomized by filmmaker Roman Polanski “a young hooker.”
Disgusting? Or is he, as The Atlantic magazine moronically described him, “as irascible and irreverent as ever”?
“Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?” Vidal told the mag. He went on to call Polanski’s incarceration in Switzerland “an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing.” Um, who’s the “fag” here?
Harvey Weinstein must be hiring writers. Mr. Vidal, your sharp wit is sorely needed in Hollywood.
New Ken: Hey, who needs Barbie?
Lock up your boys until college!
Toymaker Mattel is going after a new demographic with the introduction of its “Gay Ken” doll . . . not that there’s anything wrong with it.
Actually, the shrunken creature is called Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken. This begs the question of whether the inanimate man is paying boy toys for sexual romps with his miniature manhood.
Sugar Daddy Ken sports a fabulous coif, wears a natty green print jacket and a pink shirt, and drags a little dog on a leash — a sure method for attracting little friends.
Not one to be accused of indoctrination, Mattel insists that its $81.99 creation will be marketed to adults.
And, it says, the little dog’s name is Sugar — the better to explain away Ken’s nickname.
So can Truck Driver Barbie be far behind?
How about Gender Bender Skipper?
LA mayor ignore-ant on crimes vs. Jews
Two Jews were shot in the legs by a gunman who ambushed them outside a North Hollywood, Calif., synagogue, located in the heart of an Orthodox neighborhood. Not Frenchmen. Not Germans. Not Eskimos. Jews.
And yet, stubborn Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa initially refused to consider the attack a hate crime.
“None of us should prejudge or speculate about this crime,” he said. “At this point, all we know was that it was a random act of violence.”
Detectives were looking at “robbery-related types of crimes” — although nobody was robbed.
I don’t think officials would so blatantly put on the blinders if the victims were African-American or Latino.