Obama Graciously Compliments Republicans: "I don't think they're all terrible people. I think they love their families."

(Written in the style of Foreign Cabbie Interviewer Tom Friedman and his imitator Matt Ygelsias.)

So I was taking a cab from LaGuardia to a TED conference I had been kindly invited to attend (the precise topic of which escapes me, but I think it had something to do with either quantum mechanics or the penis) and I happened to notice that my driver, an amiable man of some 60 years, was foreign-born (at least to go by his name, which contained, to these eyes at least, a distressingly low incidence of actual vowels and a near-inundation of apostrophes, which are, I have always thought, the raindrops of the written world, n'est-ce pas?).

I knew then that this swarthy Helmsman on the Asphalt River would therefore be nearly a-burst at the seams with Folk Wisdom, simple yet incisive observations of the sort that we have all but lost in the hurly-burly and argy-bargy of our so-called newfangled "Jet Age."

I immediately took out my pen and moleskine and put a prudential fingertip to my temple to activate what I call my "Thinky SmartFace." I find that affecting the outward appearance of contemplation necessarily induces a change in one's inner state, much as a smile, even one feigned, is reported to have quite sanguinary effects as far as one's mood. (Maybe that was what the TED conference was about, now that I think upon it? No, I'm pretty sure it was about penises. Either penises or Jupiter's moons.)

"What wisdom can you apart to me, O dusky-hued herdsman of the flock metallic?" I ventured, leaning forward so that I would not miss a breath of his sage discursions, even if he whispered them dramatically, like Morgan Freeman in one of those movies where he says smart shit.

"Thees Obama, I don't understand," my savage chauffeur began, his words pregnant with the Wisdom of the Veldts.

Do they have those there? I don't really know what veldts are. Does "veldt" mean "full of grass" or "absolutely no grass"?

Wait, do I mean tundra? No I'm pretty sure he wasn't from anywhere that had tundra, unless "tundra" means "chickens in the streets," and I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

Nevermind all that, for now he completed his thought. "Thees Obama, he is always fighting with the GOP. Always a 'war on' this or a 'war on' that. Where I come from, we know real war, with children killed by mines laid in the paths even to the drinking well. That is why I fled the veldts to come here. Not for more war, but for peace."

Fuck me, it was veldts. Well done, Thinky SmartFace.

"So I don't understand," the man continued, "why thees Obama speaks this way, and why he doesn't rule like a president should, with greatness of spirit. One should not speak of war unless one intends war. And one should not intend war unless one is ready to bury one's children."

Damn, this foreign goatfucker with the shaky paperwork was like goldmine of Pulitzer Prize winning copy. Did you hear what he just said? Son of a bitch, I could see Oprah Winfrey saying that.

Easiest column I ever wrote, and My God, you don't even know how little I bother working to write these.

So there you go.

And thus, in a magnanimous gesture that will echo throughout eternity, President Obama allows: "I don't think they're all terrible people. I think they love their families."

posted by Ace at 05:11 PM

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