I REMEMBER SPUTNIK
It was 1957, we lived in Anderson, Indiana; my sister was in school
and I wasn't. She came home with her latest art project, a cork ball studded with toothpicks, painted tourquoise blue and sprinkled with glitter. The world had officially ushered in The Space Age, and America was WAY behind.What a perfect image for the condition to which Barack Obama has willfully reduced the United States of America.
As the rest of the world wheels and deals for oil money, and China collects its billions by flooding the nation with bright shiny trinkets, the United States stands tall in its sophomore's purity: oil is off-limits; endangered beetles and public sector workers are comfy on a pillow of privilege -- regular guy workers are asked to delight in the prospect of years on the dole; the military is stretched and slated for reduced numbers with which to act out super-sensitive Rules of Engagement; Orwell's language police preaching 'civility' with all the politesse of the Seven Words You Can't Say On Television; government lumbers on under a party and a president whose grasp of their job is to economy and geo-politics what 'Professor' Harold Hill's 'Think System' is to music.
The President has literally bowed and abased himself to every unsavoury global thug he could seek out. He has done everything in his power to turn the nation of pioneers into one of indentured servants. He has lately wined and dined our monetary master, who [Hu] leered with satisfaction and repaid our hospitality by stopping just short of taking a poop on the banquet table.
And the NASA budget has been slashed to where we'd need a bank loan to produce a Sputnik. I'm not even sure we could afford the cork ball and the toothpicks.
I popped in and out of the SOTU panto last night [Pillars of the Earth was on another channel] because, between the self-congratulatory hot-air issuing from the podium and the robotic jack-in-the-box action out on the floor, it has all become meaningless ballet to the delicate strains of Stockhausen.
I have this mental im
age of one of those tennis-ball lobbing machines for practicing one's serve solo, except this machine is center-stage on the congressional daïs and what it's lobbing has been collected, bolus by bolus, from the loose hay on the stable floor. Out on the floor, standing is actually the normal position, and the sitting is a ducking reflex. [By the way, if your tennis ball server remains in this position for more than four hours, consult a physician.]
Guess I'll do my patriotic duty and, after a suitable period of mourning, read the text of the SOTU address, unimpeded by all the jumpin' jack flash.
By the way, how did that Sputnik thing work out for the Big Russian Bear, anyway?
Ahh..... Miracle on Ice.
Henderson scores for Canada.
Da, Da, Ca-na-da -- Nyet, Nyet, So-vi-et.
Big Sputnikin' Deal.
Heady days.
So, as long as we're into 'the big con' and 'never let a crisis go to waste' -- well, listen to the master. No Sputniks required.
