Whining Isn't Satire (It's not Farcical Either)

…and, he ruined it. Epically. I knew it was going to happen. Nicholas Kristof takes his rightful place as an object of ridicule and scorn.

A MODEST PROPOSAL: A KING AND QUEEN FOR AMERICA by Nicholas D. Kristof 

This seems a lot less like a satire given Woody Allen’s idiocy.

The national campaign to get President Obama to emote, throw crockery 

Crockery? Is there a history of American presidents throwing clay pots at the British? Did Washington cross the Potomac with kettles in hand?

at oil executives and jump up and down in fury 

We get it. Your emphasis on the ridiculous is noted, yet nothing the White House has done since the oil spill has been any more effective than a toddler's tantrum style of crisis management.

has failed. But here’s a long-term solution: Let’s anoint a king and queen. 

Is this still satire?

If we can just get over George III, 

Yes, let’s all just forget about all that bother in the 1770’s.

our new constitutional monarchs could serve as National Hand-Holders, Morale-Boosters-in-Chief and Founts of American Indignation. 

Our king and queen could spend days traipsing

How leisurely!

along tar-ball-infested beaches, while bathing oil-soaked pelicans and thrusting strong chins defiantly at BP rigs.

That sounds less leisurely.

All that would give President Obama time to devise actual clean-up policies.

Don’t be absurd. The President can’t deal with trifling matters like a cleanup of the Louisiana coastline. He needs gather Rahm Emmanuel and Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office and figure out how to thrust cap and trade on the American people.

He might then also be able to concentrate on eliminating absurd government policies

The most prodigious supporter of bureaucracy in the history of the American presidency? Good luck.

that make these disasters more likely (such as the $75 million cap on economic damages when an oil rig is responsible for a spill).

Sometimes I marvel that terrible arguments like this still have the power to shock me. Let’s get the easy part out of the way first.

Whether you agree that a tort cap should be set, it is absolutely not a deciding issue in the context of which government policies encourage (or fail to deter) these disasters. The deciding issue, as I—and many, many others—have crowed about for weeks is that oil drilling in the vastly safer area on land and on the continental shelf has been all-but-outlawed. The American energy policy is a composite of irrational fears. We don’t build nuclear power plants because some idiots saw The China Syndrome. We don’t drill in ANWR because of some congressman’s daughter didn’t want daddy to kill the caribou. We massively subsidize wind farms and solar mills because they make Al Gore money. We push ethanol fuel even if it causes tortilla riots in Mexico. The least absurd part about the government’s involvement in this debacle is the tort cap.

Then there’s the issue of whether or not eliminating the cap helps anyone. It is blatantly immoral to apply any new laws retroactively. Stocks are already tumbling because investors regard Washington interference as risky. Massively expanding the tort liabilities of the firm would almost certainly send BP into a death spiral—not to mention the impact it may have on Halliburton and TransOcean. British Petroleum stock has plunged over 40% since late April.  Some analysts question whether or not BP will survive this disaster as a financially viable company.  Debt financing would be impossible to obtain. New equity issues would be impossible. Without a way to increase cash flow, the company would die. While some may be eager to see BP go down, the company’s demise would hurt everyone. Claimants can’t get paid unless BP is a functioning entity. Stock and bond holders in BP are, as with most blue-chip stocks, primarily pension funds and institutional investors—which are just risk-mitigating bundles of ordinary Americans (and probably quite a few Brits as well). Thousands of jobs in the energy industry are eliminated, which disproportionately hurts the Gulf region.

Eliminating the damages cap as a deterrent for future spills is equally nonsensical. If this spill—with damages capped—can obliterate BP, one of the healthiest companies in the economy prior to the spill, how can an increased tort liability possibly encourage good behavior? Getting rid of the damages cap is the equivalent of threatening to tack a few years onto the sentence of a death-row inmate.

Our president is stuck with too many ceremonial duties as head of state,

I agree. There’s absolutely no reason the President of the United States should be meeting with the NCAA Women’s basketball tournament champions. What’s next? The Northwest New Hampshire Pee-Wee Football champions?

such as greeting ambassadors and holding tedious state dinners, that divert attention from solving problems. You can preside over America or you can address its problems, but it’s difficult to find time to do both.

This doesn’t sound at all like a satire anymore.

Other countries often hand over ceremonial duties to a titular head of state with no real powers

Other countries have legacy political institutions that have long since outlived their usefulness. The tide started to turn on those…oh…around the 1770s. If only some pivotal political event occurred at that time, we might be able to explain why the concepts of monarchies and rule-by-fiat began to fall to the wayside.

— sort of a national nanny.

Nannies look after children. You’re not talking about a national nanny. You’re talking about a national butler--maybe a national social curator, a national concierge, or a national tour-guide.

In Japan, the head of state is effectively the emperor.

If you’re wondering why this sentence is clunky and difficult to navigate, it’s because by switching subject and object, Kristof has obscured the idea that the emperor of Japan is a ceremonial position.

In Germany, it’s the ceremonial president. In Britain, it’s the queen. Canada divides the job of head of state between Queen Elizabeth (a freebie since she’s on the British payroll) and her representative, the governor general.

What is it with liberals and insisting that we become more like Canada? I’ve already agreed to start watching hockey again. What more do you want?

A figurehead head of state

Figurehead of state.

is a nifty foreign policy tool as well. President Obama has twice had to delay his trip to Indonesia and Australia because of the press of domestic policy, but an American king and queen could spend days greeting crowds and cutting ribbons at new schools.

So, to be clear, the plan is to elevate someone with no intrinsic importance other than a national agreement of relevance? Isn’t that Paris Hilton?

And when they aren’t traveling, our king and queen could be kept busy hosting state dinners five nights a week.

That sounds like an effective use of the taxpayers’ money.

Some folks complain that it’s silly to fret that Mr. Obama doesn’t emote.

Some folks swim in Lake Michigan in February. Some folks protest military funerals. Some folks have amorous feelings towards farm animals. If you’re trying to make a point, don’t not-so-subtly imply the popularity of your opinion by hiding behind the “folks.”

Of course, it is.

What a useless comma.

It’s farcical

Farce? I thought we were still on satire.

that we have bullied our president into trash-talking on television about kicking some you know what.

I do know what, but that's more than meeting you half-way. This isn't farcical at all.

One of the things I admire about this administration is its cerebral,

This coming from a guy who doesn’t know when to use “farcical.”

no-drama

Is this a Mary J. Blige song? This from the President that declared during the campaign that his election would be “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. This is a President who is defined by his own megalomania. He injects himself into a beer summit for absolutely no reason. This is a President who claims that he singlehandedly averted the next Great Depression while unemployment hovers at 10%.

emphasis on empirical evidence

This is a President whose main rhetorical tools are telling sob stories and making unsubstantiated claims of self-importance. He trotted out Marcelas Owens during the health care debate. Remember this poor kid? His mother died, and his aunt, a long-time left-wing activist trotted out an 11-year old to stump for universal health care. Obama glommed on and used the boy to deflect criticism of the behemoth bill.

Here’s the really unbelievable part: Kristof himself actually came up with a sob story of his own in support of the Obama agenda. Kristof chronicled the plight of John Brodnick, who couldn’t get health coverage. The problem? John Brodnick already had health coverage well before Kristof’s piece went to press.

in addressing issues such as health, education

You mean nationalizing the student loan industry? What empirical evidence supports that decision? I can point to empirical evidence all over the place that nationalization kills innovation, suppresses growth, and disincentivizes efficiency and service. Just look at…well, anything the Soviet Union ever did.

All of this is not to mention Kevin Jennings, Obama’s safe schools czar, and Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education. Jennings has churned out scandal after scandal intimating that Kevin Jennings wants to segregate gay children in school, supports pedophiles at NAMBLA, and neglected to report instances of statutory rape when he was an educator. This man still has a job.

and poverty.

Obama’s entire first term in office is going to be a recession. This hardly seems like a poverty-fighting tactic.

This is government by adults,

Are you referring to maturity? Barack Obama is one of the youngest, and certainly the most inexperienced and unaccomplished man to ever hold the office of the presidency.

by engineers

I was under the impression that the myth of Obama’s competence had been completely rebuked. Perhaps this is a degradation of the esteem owed to engineers in the wake of BP’s inability to stop the leak.

rather than by dramatists.

George Bush, Bill Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford…there hasn’t been a president since Nixon that was as much of a thin-skinned whiner as Obama.

But Mr. Obama also knows that drama and emotion are the fuel of American politics, and that’s why he’s struggling to feign fury.

As Stephen Colbert observed about the oil spill: “We know if this was Reagan, he would have stripped to his skivvies, put a knife in his teeth, gone down there and punched that oil well shut!”

It seems like cheating to reference another, better satire in your own satire.

But let’s be realistic. Most presidents just won’t look that good in their skivvies.

Keep your pants on, Kristof.

And some may accidentally swallow the knives.

We should start looking at sword swallowers as potential candidates.

Thus, the need for a handsome king and queen to lead photo-ops.

Small-minded critics will offer petty objections, complaining that it is undemocratic or inequitable to have royalty. Hmm. Considering that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own financial wealth six times greater than the financial wealth of the entire bottom 80 percent, well, we already have an aristocracy.

This is absolutely asinine. No, the existence of individuals of great wealth does not demote a class of great wealth. The interesting part about the United States is not the absence of classes—we have never claimed to have that, nor have we claimed that was an admirable goal—but the fluidity of the classes. The top 1%, those dastardly rich, came from all sorts of backgrounds. So did the bottom 80%. Some of the bottom 80% were in the top 1% a couple years ago. The magnitude of the rewards of success and the fleeting strain of failure is what keeps America strong.

Critics may also protest the expense of royalty. But we could save on housing by having royals stay in the castles at Disneyland and Disney World.

So…back to satire again?

In any case, think of royalty as an investment that could bring in billions of dollars in tourist revenue.

If we choose well and adopt royals who are prone to scandal, we might also give a much-needed boost to the newspaper industry.

We could also do that by hiring competent writers to write for the Op-Ed pages…oh wait.

A particularly fecund couple might offer the prospect of regular royal weddings, with sales of enough commemorative kitsch to balance the federal budget.

No, seriously. Isn’t this what Paris Hilton is for?

How should we choose a king and queen? Frankly, we already have royalty: Hollywood celebrities. And they are well trained to emote and explode on demand.

Just imagine the Nielsen ratings for an Academy Awards-type evening in which Americans would choose a royal family for the first time — live!

This is exactly what American Idol is.

Movie stars are mostly rich enough that we wouldn’t have to pay them, and they can often be counted on to indulge in enough adultery to make royalty entertaining and titillating.

They also tend to be gorgeous, and if we’re going to have a king and queen stripped to their skivvies with knives in their teeth, we may as well enjoy the sight.

So you want to send Kelly Clarkson to Indonesia to manage relationships with key allies? I hate you, Nicolas Kristof.

What? You say that this would be un-American?

Stop putting words in my mouth. I say that you're an idiot.

It’s not who we are as a country?

Well, rage isn’t President Obama either.

But rage is American. If A <> B and B=C then A is what with relation to C?

It’s not who he is any more than a monarchy is America.

So maybe we should just accept that we’re stuck with a presidential system

A tragedy to you and Woody Allen.

— and with a ruminative and slightly boring president who tries to solve problems rather than fulminate about them.

Our system is based on dissent for elected officials who fail or refuse to act in the ways which we deem appropriate. Obama’s failure to react appropriately to the Deepwater Horizon spill isn’t evidence that we should lower our standards for our President. It’s evidence that we chose an incompetent administrator who has spent his life desperately fleeing from his own incompetence.