-By Frank Salvato
If you are a Baby Boomer you, no doubt, remember the television series Bewitched, starring Elizabeth Montgomery. Ms. Montgomery played Samantha Stevens, a witch who was married to a mortal and who lived in a quintessential American suburb. One of the regular characters – and one of the funnier characters – was a neighbor of the Stevens’, Gladys Kravitz, played by Alice Pearce and then Sandra Gould. An incredibly nosey neighbor, Gladys Kravitz was always just moments away from being able to prove to her husband, Abner, that “something very strange is going on over at the Stevens’ house.” Gladys Kravitz was the model busybody and, if she were alive and real today, she would, no doubt, be a member of the 111th Congress.
Gladys Kravitz knew everything and nothing at all, all at the same time. Her advice was most always wrong and her opinion was most always uninformed but this didn’t mean that she ever gave thought to not offering both to anyone and everyone with whom she came in contact. Mrs. Kravitz, as Samantha always called her, believed that she was always right, even without knowing all the facts or understanding all the issues. That she existed was enough reason for her input to be solicited and Lord help you if you didn’t act on her advice in an expeditious manner! Just ask Abner!
As I remember the character I can’t help but think that we have a factionalist gaggle of Mrs. Kravitzs currently running our government. Then, in deference to Ms. Pearce, Ms. Gould and the writers of Bewitched, I reconsidered…the gaggle now in control of the US government is much worse. The 111th Congress can only be described as being run by a minority of know-it-alls who insist they know what’s best for you, for me, for our entire country without any practical experience to support their arrogance and without any understanding of reality to sustain their bloated sense of elitist superiority.
How else can you explain moments like these?
? Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) – a white woman – tries to lecture National Black Chamber of Commerce president Harry Alford – a Black man – on the position of Black activists regarding Climate Change legislation.
? President Obama, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner coerce many of the nation’s largest and most influential banking and financial institutions into ceding control and financially ingratiating their privately held companies to the government under the notion that government knows best how to fix the economy.
? The same trio of grifters bullied GM into ceding corporate board power to the Auto Workers Union and pressured Chrysler into becoming a foreign-owned company, both in a fashion that would make Don Vito Corleone envious.
? Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) strong-armed a stimulus bill through Congress with not a single elected official actually reading the bill, doing so while preaching to the people, “We know best how to stem the crisis.”
? President Obama took to the national airwaves, in his fourth prime time press conference since being elected to office, to stump for a healthcare package which he admits he hasn’t even read. Offering no specifics – yet again – he insisted that he knew for certain what would happen if the bill wasn’t passed.
? President Obama, in the face of unprecedented slaughter on the post-election streets of Tehran, refused to offer even moral support for the pro-freedom Iranian patriots whose blood stained the streets of many Iranian cities. He is still committed – even as Iran’s mullahs prepare to go nuclear – to his naïve notion of offering the “unclenched fist” in the hopes the mullahs will drink the Kool-Aid of his hollow rhetoric, just as the American electorate did.
The list could go on and on and on but the fact here is indisputable, the leaders in control of the US government haven’t a clue as to the realities of the issues they face. They are simply executing government on failed ideological philosophies, disastrous economic theories, a wing and a prayer. It is unconscionable that we not only elected these arrogant ideologues to power, but that our society allowed a generation to be so self-absorbed and devoid of common sense, both at the same time.
How did we come to this? Simple. Our current control generation – the Baby Boomer Generation – is too pre-occupied with themselves, too narcissistic, too worried about amassing material things to give a damn about understanding what government is doing or how it works until after they feel it in their wallets. How else can you explain a pathetic 63% voter turnout for one of the most important elections of our lifetimes, the 2008 Presidential Election? Where were those who comprised the non-voting 37% of the population? Too busy watching American Idol, I suspect. “Election? What channel?”
In the end, perhaps it is that we need more Mrs. Kravitzs providing oversight to the narcissistic Baby Boomers elected to office and less Mrs. Kravitzs in government itself. Can’t you hear it now?…”Abner, there’s something fishy going on over at the Obama house!”
If only…
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Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal . He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His pieces are regularly featured in over 100 publications both nationally and internationally. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, and is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, as well as an occasional guest on numerous radio shows coast to coast. He recently partnered in producing the first-ever symposium on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Washington, DC. His pieces have been recognized by the House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict. He can be contacted at oped@newmediajournal.us
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