Like everyone else in the civilized world, I was delighted that Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy Seals. But I must admit I regret it didn’t happen under George W. Bush’s watch. I just have this feeling that he would have given all the credit to the warriors who risked their lives carrying out the mission, and not kept the lion’s share for himself.
I am also disappointed if what I’ve read about bin Laden’s final send-off is true. Was the creep’s corpse actually washed, wrapped in a white sheet and had an Islamic prayer read over it before it was dropped into the sea? If I remember correctly, bin Laden played a major role in the murder of 3,000 Americans, forcing a number of them to leap from skyscrapers because their only other option was to be incinerated, and we’re giving him a respectful burial? If it had been up to me, I’d have wrapped his cremated remains in pigskin and then had a midshipman punt him off the poop deck.
Moving on, more often than not, folks would do well to keep in mind that liberals only use their brains to keep their ears apart. For instance, have you heard that Democrats have come out in opposition to people having to show photo IDs if they wish to vote? Their contention is that it’s an affront to blacks, Hispanics, young people and even democracy, itself, although they carefully refrain from explaining the nature of the affront. Which, even I have to grant, is perfectly reasonable on their part; otherwise, they would have to explain how it is that democracy, even for blacks, Hispanics and young Americans, has so far survived such insidious things as drivers’ licenses and Homeland Security requirements at the airport.
Someone who used his brains for something other than a cranial buffer zone might actually wonder why anybody would think that driving to the mall or flying to Fresno should be taken more seriously than making certain that voting in our elections be a right limited to American citizens.
Finally, although I still enjoy listening to Donald Trump, especially when he’s taking on Obama, I’m afraid that after his embarrassing performance in Las Vegas, I can no longer consider him a viable GOP nominee in 2012. It’s not that I’m a goody two-shoes; I admit that I occasionally swear in private, but never in print. And if Trump is too dumb to recognize the chasm that exists between public and private speech, and the necessity for a Republican candidate to win the hearts and minds of evangelical voters, he’s simply too dumb to be president.
When people say that they don’t know why Trump kept dropping those “F” bombs in Vegas, I explain it’s because Trump was behaving like a typical liberal. Whenever left-wingers get together, they let their true feelings out, and that usually translates into opening their potty mouths. So it was that when Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal appeared some years ago at the Radio Music City Hall for a Democratic event, they never thought twice about making a series of unfunny, off-color remarks playing off George Bush’s last name.
In similar fashion, when Barack Obama was hitting up San Francisco businessmen for campaign donations in 2008, he casually denigrated Southern and Midwestern Christians as those yokels who cling to their religion and their guns.
So it was that when Trump dropped the first obscenity on the crowd of Vegas drunks, whom he had generously and foolishly plied with free booze, it got such a resounding response, he got carried away. In this day and age, when modern technology almost lets people know what you’re thinking, let alone saying, you have to be a complete dunce to forget that your audience doesn’t consist of the 500 knuckleheads in the room, but everyone in the entire world with a radio, a TV or an Internet connection.
What Trump neglected to keep in mind is that it’s not Gospel, but merely the tagline for a tourism campaign, that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Burt Prelutsky is a humor columnist, a movie critic and a writer for TV. He’s written episodes of MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn and Diagnosis Murder. He blogs at BurtPrelutsky.com.