My Fantasy Date with Barry
This fall, the results of perhaps the most important contest in the history of the United States will be decided: who has won "Dinner with Barack."
Interestingly, the contest is not called "Dinner with the President" or "Dinner with Mr. Obama," but "Dinner with Barack," suggesting a date not with a megalomaniac or an out-of-touch elitist but with an everyday Joe you can get to know on a first name basis.
According to the official contest website, the promotion is "open only to U.S. citizens, or lawful permanent U.S. residents who are legal residents of the 50 United States." Those who don't fit these requirements need not fear; I'm sure the president will eventually use an executive order to open the promotion to illegal aliens and expand eligibility to residents of all 57 states.
If I win "Dinner with Barack" there will be a million questions I'll want to ask him. First, I'll want the inside dirt on all the really cool, really hip Hollywood celebs he pals around with. Has George Clooney's charity -- Not on Our Watch -- managed to end world hunger and bring world peace? Specifically, how much lifesaving humanitarian aid has he brought the world's vulnerable, marginalized and displaced? Have you jammed-out at any disaster relief concerts lately? How about Sarah Jessica Parker? Will she be trick-or-treating with UNICEF this year?
After the ice is broken over a few drinks (I'm not sure how comfortable I will be able to get with the Secret Service staring at me), I'm going to get down to real business: I'll ask Barack to show me how to make all my personal, academic, and financial records disappear. How does one go about doing something like that, exactly? Do you threaten people in the registrar's office of your university? Do you have the DOJ fire bomb your doctor's car if he gives out your medical records? Do you phone your old kindergarten principal and in a raspy Don Corleone voice say, Release any of my papier-mâché dolls or finger-paintings and you'll sleep with the fishes?
Next, we'll turn to small talk about Barack's brother, George Obama. How is old George doing, anyway? Still living on a dollar a month in that tiny hut in a Nairobi slum? Are you planning on watching the Anti-Obama documentary he will be starring in called "2016: Obama's America"? How's the rest of your Kenyan relatives? Still suffering in hopeless poverty while waiting proudly for you to take some special interest in their well being? Maybe you could invite them to dinner with you sometime.
Soon I'll steer our discussion to the president's "Whac-A-Mole" drone strikes in the Middle East, and his Clint Eastwood-like card shuffling of terrorist "baseball cards." Mr. President -- can I call you Barry? -- how do you decide which bad guy you want to pulverize with a computer guided missile? Do you really just shuffle the cards, or do you throw the whole deck on the floor like in "52 Pick-Up" and choose blindly from there? Man, you sure are tough and crazy. Definitely the toughest, craziest, most hardcore president I ever had dinner with, that's for sure!
Oh, and can I ask you another question? Another two questions, actually. First: what was it like to single-handedly command the Navy SEAL helicopters that swooped down into that Pakistani compound and took out Bin Laden? Were you scared or nervous? Second: when you play your Whac-A-Mole drone game with your terrorist baseball cards, what do you do when you miss your target and your computer guided missile accidentally slams into a hospital or school and blows-up a bunch of innocent women and children? I read somewhere your drone strikes are pretty careless. How do you deal with that? Does it bother you at all (probably not a guy like you).
Next, we'll talk about the state of Israel. After Barry hints that the country should be reduced to its pre-1967 borders, I'll ask him how his White House meeting went with the Muslim Brotherhood. Anybody stone any women while they were there? Before he can try to censor my use of the phrase "Islamic extremist," I'll change the subject to the 1991 booklet published by Barry's literary agency, Dystel & Goderich, which listed him as being "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." How in God's name did this happen, Barry? Miriam Goderich made a fact-checking error, right. Ha, ha. That's a good one. That's almost as funny as when you made Georgetown University cover-up Jesus when you gave a speech at their school this past May.
He'll take out a cigarette (of course the restaurant's non-smoking policy won't apply to the Anointed One). I'll try to bum one off him but then Barry will give me a look that says, Get your own cigarettes. I'll explain to him that this is quite rude being that he is the POTUS and can print his own money - what's one lousy cigarette when the national debt is nearly $16 trillion and counting -- at which point the Secret Service will step in and tell me the night is over.
The check will come and yes, I'll have to pick up the tab. I'll protest but Barry will remind me that his "Dinner with Barack" contest only covers the plane ticket and hotel.
And that will be it. I'll be sent packing like a prisoner in a Polish death camp. I'll stand up from the table, nearly knocking over the teleprompter Barry's been reading from the entire night, and excuse myself.
"Goodbye, Barry," I'll say, and walk out of the restaurant into Obama's America.
Christopher Paslay is a frequent contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of The Village Proposal. His blog, "Chalk and Talk," is at http://chalkandtalk.wordpress.com.