Saturday, April 30, 2011

Winning through whining... Or not

[Hello again.  I can't believe it's been almost six months since my last post.  Life has been, well... life.  There's been ample absurdity just not enough time to point it out.  But now I'm back.  Hey, don't run away now!]

As many of you know I have a preschool-aged son and one of the lessons we're working to instill in him is that whining doesn't work.  When he whines we make a concerted effort to make sure he doesn't get what he's whining about.  (Heaven help us if when he gets wise to this and starts fussing that he wants more air, or gravity or something like that.  Watch for exploding heads.)  So far that strategy seems to be working and he whines much less for us than he does for others (*cough* grandparents *cough*).

Unfortunately a bad example of rewarding whining was set this week when President Obama released his long-form birth certificate after almost three years of bitching, moaning and.... well, let's just call it what it is: lying, from the rabid right wing and even some of the previously-saner members of the GOP.  Whining worked.  What a great lesson for my son.  They got what they wanted.

Or did they?

Does anyone think the birthers *really* wanted to see the birth certificate? Anyone sane, I mean.

Of course not.  They wanted an excuse to trot out their latent (and sometimes overt) racism under the guise of a Constitutional challenge to his legitimacy, giving it the faintest patina of possibility.  ("Patina Of Possibility"?  Sounds like a Yanni album.)  These buffoons never questioned John McCain's legitimacy to run for the presidency despite his admitting that he was born in the Panama Canal zone.  Was it ok with them because he's a Republican?  Hell no.  It was ok because he's white.

This week President Obama didn't give in to whiners.  He called their bluff.  They're not the kids who cry that they want another cookie for desert.  They're the ones trying to hold their breath forever until Daddy buys them a pony.  (A white pony, of course.)

My preference would be to have let them hold their breath longer, releasing the long form closer to the election but, as I've mentioned here before, Barack Obama is probably the smartest man we've ever had in the Whitehouse.  Six months from now I suspect I'll look back and understand his timing better.

Until then, I'm going to pop some corn and watch the birthers foam at the mouth trying to dispute the paperwork they've "wanted" for years all the while coming up with new "challenges" each more absurd than the last.  This should be good.

Sometimes it's good to be the absurdist.