An Open Letter to the Mother Of John Marshall Cheatham

Dear Mrs. Cheatham,
As you are by now, no doubt aware, your son, John Marshall Cheatham was killed on July 26 as the result of a rocket-propelled grenade attack outside of Baghdad. You have my condolences. What you may not be aware of, however, is the fact that your son was one of only 10 (10! :-) ) U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq last month. As the American media has wasted no time in informing us, that's the lowest death toll enjoyed by the U.S. since we accomplished our mission of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people three years ago.

(What?! He lied to us?! And we thought he was such a nice boy.)

Since, at the age of 19, your son was the youngest soldier killed last month, I decided that you should be the recipient of this letter of congratulations. You must be very proud, Mrs. Cheatham, to be a part of such a singular moment in U.S. history. As you watch John's friends and classmates grow up, get married and start families of their own, try to suppress your pity, as they will never know the type of pride that you now enjoy and that would no doubt be shared by your son if he were still alive.

In the midst of all this mirth and celebration, however, it should be noted that, had your son managed to stay alive only a few more days, he would've made July 2008 even more of a banner month for the U.S. military, as it would've been the first time in years that citizen volunteers died only in the single digits (disregarding Afghanistan, suicides, and soldiers that return home or are airlifted to other countries before they die from their injuries which is, of course, a number that the government is not so anxious to report).

Despite the tremendous sense of joy that you're feeling right now, Mrs. Cheatham, you may at some point in the future feel yourself giving in to the kind of crushing despair that can only be known by those who have seen their children needlessly struck down in their prime. However, I hope you will find some solace in the fact that 1.) your son could very easily have died from a rocket-propelled grenade attack while living a quiet life at home in Arkansas and 2.) he died for a noble cause, and as soon as the government determines what that cause is, you will no doubt be the first to know.

Sincerely,
Blueneck Guy

Obama-rama Drama

I had hoped to save this title for the day when Barack would be involved in some fracas involving a llama or perhaps a baby mama (a llama's baby mama would have been ideal), but I'm willing to admit that such a day might never come and that my passion for absurd compound rhymes doesn't affect the world of presidential politics (yet). Sigh.

Anyway, let me begin by saying that I fully understand the desire to flee a country where people are threatening to castrate you:

(Why does this guy keep having problems with reverends? He should really just convert to Judaism, its the one ethnic group he hasn't locked down yet.)

I'm very protective of my own testes, to the point that I once spent two years in Mexico, simply because I pissed off a guy who liked to wear steel-toed boots. However, I wasn't running for president at the time, and the decision to take the Monsters of Barack tour abroad seems, to me, horribly ill-timed and ill-conceived. No black man has spent this much time in Europe since Jay-Z discovered Saint-Tropez. The question is, why?

I know that in recent years, Democrats have made a fun little game of royal fucking their own campaigns up, but this is getting ridiculous. I'm trying to imagine the strategy meeting where Obama's advisors proposed (without giggling) that he spend a few weeks during a crucial part of his campaign shedule addressing millions of people who CAN'T FUCKING VOTE IN THIS COUNTRY. Was he unaware of this fact? Does he think he's running for president of the world? Where's he going next Hawai'i?! (We don't count their banana votes, do we? C'mon! They're not real Americans! What next, Kansas?!)

Maybe the whole thing was a stroke of genius. B.O. got a ton of press out of the deal, while McCain sat at home, drooling into his porridge and jerking off with a bottle of Cialis and a lithograph of Greta Garbo's exposed ankle (he's old). Perhaps more importantly, the Europeans ate it up. As evdenced by the crowd of 200,000 (!) cheering spectators that Obama drew to his Berlin speech.

("How do you say 'fo' shizzle' in German?")

Can you imagine if some dude who was running for president of Germany came to give a speech in the US? Maybe 20 people would show up, and only if "Dancing with the Stars" was a re-run that night. Bear in mind, however, that Europeans are easy to please. Give them some baguettes, a Jerry Lewis DVD, some fucked-up electrical outlets and an absence of soap and they're pretty much happy. As long Obama didn't morph into Bush or call himself a jelly doughnut like JFK, he could do no wrong.

That's all well and good, but with all due respect to the rest of the world, who the hell cares what they think? The motivation behind this trip was not, apparently, scoring some dank Northern Lights in the Netherlands, but the much less understandable goal of proving to Americans that Obama would make a suitable Commander-in-Chief of the military. Whu?!?!?!? First of all, the only people who give a shit about that kind of thing are middle-America hicks, and one can only imagine how much the idea of a jaunt around Europe must've appealed to them. Secondly, Europeans, for the most part, hate the American military, and as much as they're lining up to kiss his ass now, they'll hate Obama as soon as he takes the reins. He's a rockstar now, but if (and god-willing when) he takes office and maintains a troop presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan (as he intends to) those frogs and krauts will turn their nose up at him like he was a plate of Kraft Singles.

Bear in mind, I do still endorse Obama, and that's why I'm so critical of the way he's running his campaign. If he fucks this election up, then it will just further support the idea that the Democrats couldn't get laid in a whorehouse with a fist full of twenties. I can only imagine the frustration of running for president in a country where most people spent last week in a movie theater trying to remember if they voted for this two-faced Harvey Dent guy, but if he keeps globe-trotting, we'll never get our little dark knight into the White House.