It started a little while ago. Your boy was reading the Village Voice’s fantastic Rightbloggers, where the topic du jour was braining Obama over his “foreign policy crisis” Chicago Olympics “failure.” This particular non-troversy proved to be a real chance to unload, bookended as it was by successful events like a speech to schoolchildren and a Nobel Prize victory.

A click-through to Michelle Malkin’s site unearthed the goddamn Hope Diamond of post comments:

WHAT

THE

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lost in the noise machine was that 2009 is the year conservatives discovered snark. This is not your average John from Fuquay  ”wasting our taxpayer dollars ” WRAL response. This People-reading mother of 3 painstakingly slaved over the kitchen table laptop to get this one together. “Timothy McVeigh?…no that’s too weird……….Roman Polanski?!…ehhhhhh…I don’t want to get called a racist…shit,….GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I mean, even if Michael didn’t do all those bad things people say he did, there’s still this to contend with:

Damn, is it really like that?

I say fuck the race card. Obama’s the Conan O’Brien of politics: a non-traditional, Harvard-educated cool nerd who, plucked from obscurity, rose to the top by being consistently awesome. And who also lives with a dedicated minority that will always, always hate his guts.

What disappoints me is the behavior of my peers, who remain apathetic as attitudes towards Obama have fallen off the cliff. Any elation from the historic election has worn off. Last year, the thought of the White House personally defending itself from Fox News seemed ludicrous.

And last year, if you divided young Obama supporters (represented by 100% Certified Sarcasm) and McCain/Palin advocates (represented by Un-Ironic Right-Wing Statements) into two groups, man, that Venn diagram wasn’t touching. But as you’ll note below, our sarcasm has slowly eroded over the course of this year:

The Gravity’s Rainbow set and the Bible-clutchers, together at last. Shameful shit. Do we really have anything in common with these people?! Okay, you’re frustrated over the lack of speed of reform, but look at the seething rage we’re receiving just from moving at a glacial pace! We can’t go any faster if we have to drag half the country along.

Nothing’s changed. Obama is still the most competent President we’ve had in 20 years (sorry, Bill, it’s true). Consider: his three main opponents in 2008 were two men who walked out on their wives and a woman who stood by her cheater. Bush shouted hysterically from the rooftops to BUY SOME SHIT PLEASE after 9/11, whereas Obama prefers to calmly lead by example. And he gets banged on about “taxpayer money” for taking his wife on a date??! That’s almost as bad as accusing a Constitutional law professor of ignoring/destroying the Constitution…oh wait.

The only progressive response offered has been the “LOOK AT ME” fuckers behind the Billionaires Against Health, a group whose whole shtick is that you aren’t smart enough to assess these moron protesters as morons on your own. They have to help you with it.

Excuse me, I’m as confused by that as Slim Thug trying to get his chain into a Cash 4 Gold envelope.

I understand that “hard times” used to only mean the semester on academic probation, but COME ON. The right tried to peddle this shit last year and it didn’t work. Why now? Why is a child asking Obama why everyone hates him? The jokers behind the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (the lie at the time was that the change would INCREASE local civic debate) pray and pray that the majority continues with the ol’ “hipster defense” towards Fox News — laugh at it and hope it goes away.

The next time a hatchet job on Obama emerges, I plan on politely and cheerfully telling the muckrakers to shut the fuck up.

No more Jay Lenos in the White House!

illustrations courtesy of Samuel Rhodes

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