Happy Birthday, Mr. Presidents
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Some of you seemed irked that we gave insufficient coverage to
our president’s All-Star Game pitch. Relax, please. We advise
patience. It is a virtue, after all. Which in turn is its own
reward. We’re now happy to confirm that, after a turbulent
three-week 60-foot, six-inch flight, the president’s historic
toss has finally arrived at home plate. Didn’t exactly cross it
so much as trickle over it, pushed along on its final leg by some
eager-beaver ants, who were grateful for the work. Having checked
with Rahm Emanuel, they credit the stimulus package for their
unanticipated burst of speed.
What a nice birthday gift for our president. There were other
presents. Visiting businessmen wouldn’t let him pay for lunch.
Helen Thomas accepted a free cupcake. The Cambridge Police didn’t
card or arrest him. And the starstruck New York Times
confirmed it’s in the habit of doodling his name. In the paper’s
crossword yesterday, the clue for 71-Across read: “President born
on August 4, whose name can be found backward in 17-, 31-, 47-
and 63-Across.” We don’t make this stuff up. How could we? We’ve
never been in love like that.
Here are the winning entries: 17: Dreamabout. 31: Pajamabottoms.
47: Alabamaborder. And 63: Beamaboard. We suspect something else
is going on — Obama spelled backward could resolve the birth
certificate contretemps. Have investigators been sniffing after
the wrong surname? What if it is actually Amabo? Forget Kenya.
He’s owned by Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.
But how sad that Kenya is out of the running. We rather liked the
notion that Mr. Obama might be a British subject, and as such a
future prime minister of Great Britain and regular visitor to the
British Museum. Never too late to improve one’s Marx!
Not to spoil the party, but can it be a presidential birthday
without major participation by the original August birthday boy?
Bill Clinton has resurfaced just in time. Though his birth date
is August 19, it used to be that nearly the entire month was set
aside for celebrations of his aging process, as if it had taken
as long for him to achieve birth as it had that all-star pitch to
land in St. Louis. As often as not, his entire summer vacation
was a endless string of birthday parties on Martha’s Vineyard.
Lots of beautiful people would bow to him, and he sailed with
Walter Cronkite, who provided more anchor than his boat required.
Bill and Walter had much in common. We learned from Tom Brokaw’s
recent
farewell to him that Walter was a big fan and friend of the
The Grateful Dead’s drummer (which makes you wonder what was in
the pipe he innocently smoked). As it happens, Bill is a fan of
his brother Roger, who is no mean rocker himself, as we
discovered when he took his band into North Korea in 1999. (His
hosts even wrote some of his lyrics: “I have received a message
of peace from Pyongyang, which I will correctly convey to our
people,” he was quoted
as crooning.) Roger was also skilled in the pardons game, and his
advance work came in handy on Mr. Obama’s birthday. Hillary was
unavailable, so Obama sent in the boy to do the man’s work. Bill
Clinton traveled into North Korea unescorted and emerged with
pardons for two American journalists held hostage by the NK
regime. Perhaps he was doing this to embarrass Al Gore, who had
abandoned the two journalists, or maybe he just wanted to meet
them. They were reportedly women, if you must know.
What we can’t understand is the dour look on Mr. Clinton’s face
on the release of the two women. After all, the three of them
would be flying back on the same plane. Maybe he was worried
about how he’d explain it all to Hillary, or to Jesse Jackson,
whose monopoly it once was to lead such rescue missions. Or maybe
he simply felt used and ashamed of himself. According to his NK
hosts, “Clinton expressed words of sincere apology to Kim
Jong Il for the hostile acts committed by the two American
journalists.” Not even Kenneth Starr dared put words like that in
his mouth.
