Slam Bam? No, thank you! Actually, our young president deserves admiration occasionally. I recall my genuine, though short-lived, marvel and eagerly anticipated satisfaction in three areas: his initial firm stances on–shirking blind-faithed, regimented, patriotic displays of reverence which would have served only for crowd-pleasing “show”; clinging to his respect for a truth-telling preacher; and recognizing that “gun-totin’ “combined with “Bible-thumpin’ “simply cannot peacefully co-exist within one person–too oxymoronic!

Presently, Barack suffers relentless bashing for that very quality with which we should have become accustomed during campaign ’08, or even a little further back: he “flip-flops” as he dances/waltzes/glides from one side of the ballroom to the other. He, a product of mass-appeal-production, obeys the Madison Avenue shenanigans of “handlers” who indeed pushed him toward the pot o’ gold at rainbow’s end yet currently suggest that he never attempts to govern? Many mini-vacations, sit-down chats with foreign leaders, victory gardens, maybe even a dog named Bo, and charming presidential “drop-by” televised visits to classrooms all slip now into the danger zone.

Republican revolutionaries squeal for his head at town-hall informational meetings, crying out jingoistic chants and epithets such as, “Socialism, Muslim-ism, Communism, birth certificate fraud, death panels, boogity boogity BOO”, while those same rabble-rousers enjoy Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security checks in the mail. I refused to vote for “Barry” because of his plasticity and bobble-headedness, but “hot damn”, the confusion he generates lately strikes as cause for celebration.

Facebook “friends” range from the absurd to the really real, and I got flushed out (not down) very recently by a fella sporting a camouflage “avatar” cap and thereby immediately ceased my political floundering. I refer to us both as “Strange Bedfellows”, since politics can do that to two otherwise normal folks. Rick’s a thinking Conservative, while I’m a Liberal progressive who, for instance, notices the jealousy Palin ignites in young, trendy women, referred to by leggy co-ed Paula Prentiss decades ago in the cinematic WHERE THE BOYS ARE as “baby factories”, dames who actually follow Sarah’s lead but hate her guts. I’m almost a third “party-er” these days, as Obama himself indeed may become, who acknowledges the extreme silliness manifested in the magnetic, polarizing, dictatorial agenda-pull (“the wool over their eyes”) of either party.

Truly, let us not dwell in the valley of Old Testament, “hunting and gathering”, club-carrying Neanderthals, as the year is 2009! Likewise, the “Buttons & Bows” duet-melody of Bob Hope and Jane Russell should exist only as a distant, old-fashioned, dated memory. Burly bullies and curvaceous, obedient vamp-tramps–oh, be gone! Neither should we vacuously claim to follow the teachings of the New Testament which logically, sweetly boil down to “Love one another” as long as the designedly divisive qualities of our national dialogue, at the moment, conjure up third world “natives are restless” tribal jeer-jabs and scurrilous put-downs, whether we acknowledge this lunacy or not.

Dear Mister Prez: I liked you, honestly LIKED you, for a couple of weeks during the spring of 2008, but you stuck your nose into the air and dribbled that “aren’t I the cutest jock?” ball into another court and another and another. Thus, I sensed that YOU yourself could be “handled” and mis-directed in order that we might swoon and vote you enthusiastically, though super-shallow-ficially, into that manse at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Your present behavior surprises me not…though I still yearn for the former “hippie”-Obie, probably also a pose–as your age group not yet born when we all wore flowers in our hair? True hippies neither fluctuate nor genuflect…so that’s my “third party” point of view, and I cannot be talked or conned into endorsing a poseur. I followed my intuition in the voting booth, and that very same instinct allows me to give you a second chance. Show us of what sterner stuff you are made. Let us critique you fairly since your “sacred cow” status has been downgraded and transformed, as sportscaster Harry Caray once exclaimed, into “Holy Cow!” Waiting for your “I’M MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE” Network/Peter Finch moment. Try it! Your potential for greatness seems plausible.

There. It is written. My acid reflux wanes.