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The Return of P.T. Barnum And Elmer Gantry

November 6th, 2013 11:40 pm
"Between a fellow who is stupid and honest and one who is smart and crooked, I will take the first. I won’t get much out of him, but with the other guy, I can’t keep what I’ve got.” Lewis B. Hershey, U.S. Army Four Star General


November 6, 2013


By:  Linda Case Gibbons


          You’re losing your health insurance and he’s hosting a screening of Harvey Weinstein’s new flick, "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”
          You’re worrying about where your next pay check is coming from, and Obama’s worrying that "Harvey from Hollywood” will stop funding his bottomless campaign fund, so he's working that side of the room.
          Now, don’t be judgmental! It may look like the president doesn’t give a darn about you, but that just isn’t true.
          Sure he may have told you over 36 times that you can keep your health insurance and doctor. We’ve already gone over that. It’s on tape, back to back, we know. He said it. And it wasn’t true. We covered that, too. Then he said he never said it. Then he apologized after he got caught. By that time we were just too tired to care.
          But that isn’t the whole story.
          I think there is something good coming out of what is being called the "Obamacare Debacle.” Honestly.
          Because of it, Barack Obama is being pointed toward his true calling and why wouldn’t you be happy for him?
          I think he has a rosy future as a "promoter.”
          Now, don’t laugh. He has that P.T. Barnum chutzpah and the skill set to pull it off.
          He has the "evangelist” spark of an Elmer Gantry, a fast-talking traveling salesman/ con artist who successfully "sold religion” to small town America.
          Of course, you remember P.T. for his whole Ringling Bros. circus thing, but he’s best remembered for promoting hoaxes in his travelling shows and his New York museum.
          Some cruelly called them "his freak acts,” but that’s needlessly unkind.
          There was the "Feejee Mermaid,” not a real mermaid but a creature with the head of a monkey and the tail of a fish, Siamese twins, a dwarf who was really a short, short four-year-old and a nurse who supposedly was 106 years old and had taken care of George Washington.
          Unbelievable, but he sold it and people believed him.
          To those who said the "acts” were scams, P.T. justified them by saying they were simply "advertisements to draw attention to the Barnum Museum.”
          Sounds familiar.
          Elmer Gantry used similar, mainstream organizing methods.
          He joined forces with a saintly revivalist and together they played good cop/bad cop. He’d threaten eternal damnation for their sins and she promised salvation if they repented. And they always stayed on message.
          They were lying, but they stayed on message.
          Both men had money as their personal god. Both whipped up the public’s enthusiasm, P.T. with the help of the 26 journalists on his payroll.
          Does any of this sound strikingly familiar to you?
          What you might not know is P.T. was also a politician. He served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865, so there’s kind of a match with Obama, except that P.T. was a Republican.
          Coincidentally a couple of P.T.'s quotes match what we’ve come to know as Obama’s take on life, especially with his promotion of his healthcare law: "A sucker is born every minute,” and "Every crowd has a silver lining.”
          I don’t believe in duping the public,” P.T. said, "but I believe in first attracting (to his Museum) and then pleasing them.”
          That sounds familiar, too.
          Well, no matter what you say, I think Obama has the makings of a great promoter. He has the charisma of P.T. and like Gantry, knows when it’s time to throw God into his rhetoric.
          Heck, Obama could sell ice to eskimos and turn a handsome profit as we’ve seen with his flawed and troubling healthcare law. You just have to know, as he does, when to leave out some pertinent, but inconvenient facts.
          So right now, if he wants to, Obama has talent right in his own administration to pack up his "travelling show” and head on out.
          Joe is a shoo-in to include in the side show with his wacky stories.
          Then he has Pelosi. She’s guaranteed to entertain.
          Remember back in 2010 when she was extolling Obamacare? Remember? She said no one had to be "job locked” anymore because they had to worry about their health plan.
          "We see it as an entrepreneurial bill,” she said, "a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.”
          I have to admit, I didn’t know that. That you could just…not work.
          And she’s still on that page today. In fact, Pelosi sees Obamacare in a way that makes my heart swell with…I don’t know how to describe the emotion.
          In a September interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Pelosi was asked for her reaction to union boss James Hoffa, Jr.’s description of Obamacare as a way to "destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week.”
          Nah, Nancy said.
          "For the American people, this is a liberation. This is life, healthy life, liberty, the freedom to pursue your happiness, which could be to follow your passion…”
          Okay…That’s doesn’t mesh with the horror stories I’ve been hearing about Obamacare. But then again you have to remember Pelosi sees things through a different prism. She also told us that unemployment benefits create jobs faster than any other program…
          Well, I don’t get that one, but she's right about Americans having free time.
          With the 40-hour work week gone, no jobs around and healthcare bleeding us dry, many of us do have time on our hands, just like she said.
          There is time to write that novel! Paint that landscape!
          So Obama could take Pelosi along on his travelling tour.
          Harry Reid could tell the crowds how funny he thinks Obamacare is when those darn Republicans keep harping on the millions of Americans being dumped out of their coverage.
          It's all a big joke, he said in Congress this week, complete with his giggles. And actually it really does seem hilarious when he says it in that way that he has, especially with that whispery voice of his.
          Then there’s Kathleen Sebelius. Kathleen. She continues to shine.
          Chiseled features, flat affect, icy coldness, she could be billed as the "Ice Princess” as she tells her stories about Obamacare, while she blankly agrees that felons can be hired to process your Obamacare information.
          There are no restrictions on felons in the federal regs, Sebelius coolly admitted during Senate hearings this week. States could put them in their navigator employment regulations, she supposed, but they're not included in the 33,000 pages of Obamacare regulations. 
          The words "Do background checks on exchange navigators…” weren’t included in the 11,588,500 words they did include in the law, I guess, because...
          So she’d be good, telling that story when the Obamacare circus comes to a town near you.
          Don't miss it. It should be good for a couple of laughs.
          Hold the line, America.
 
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