OBAMA'S WARS >> Good Fighter, Can’t Cheerlead Worth A Damn

And boom, at last, Osama was dead. On Obama’s watch. Whoo-hoo! Let the victory parades begin!

Except there weren’t any. I remember real well the weird queasy hush after bin Laden died. Nobody ever tells the truth in this country, so nobody could talk about why Obama never got the cheers he expected, but we all know why. It’s simple: There are two tribes in America and neither one was in a mood to cheer. Obama’s liberal fans couldn’t cheer because they have some taboo about parading around with your enemy’s head on a stick. They think it’s crude or something, “a regrettable necessity”—you know that NYT editorial jabber they use.

And the other tribe, the flyover state white glob I come from, would sooner comp bin Laden a suite in Vegas than give Obama any creds for taking him down. They sulked through it like a confused, hungover Pillsbury doughboy; the way they saw it, Obama got bin Laden on a technicality. There’s always been a lot of Osama/Obama blur in the way they see things, and they might’ve been happier if it’d been Osama zapping that snotty Hawaiian instead of the other way around.

And his real base, the tiny little islands of rich happy people who floss twice a day and eat Kale chips — the sane crust floating on the redneck lava — they don’t even want him to help us get our blood-gloat on. So Obama trying to drag Osama’s corpse around — but trying to do it politely, so he didn’t offend the pious Prius people—it put everybody in a bad mood, all bummed and embarrassed. Like having a Unitarian preside when you sacrifice a goat.

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