Amused Cynic

I must confess, Obama is starting to give me a tingle up my leg, but not in the way Chris Matthews meant it.
No, I’m starting to taste the free lunch I wagered back in the early spring when, after a dinner party, I told a disbelieving horde of Obamaphiles that their Pied-Piper Messiah was “toast.” That McCain would cream him when the real election came around in November.

Someone bet me lunch that I was wrong, and I took that bet and offered to make the same wager with the rest of this crowd of NPR addicts. There were no other takers, and after the now legendary “Saddleback” church interviews and with the Clinton/Obama Democratic convention in the offing, they must be glad that they didn’t take me up on my braggadocio. I have a taste for very expensive lunches, and I now believe more firmly than ever that Obama is toast.

I didn’t watch the Saddleback show because I had my family over for dinner, and we had the Michael Phelps/Dara Torres show going on in the background while we discussed my baby sister’s newly-acquired tenure-track position at a famous university….that was much more exciting. But I will have to get around to watching the taped versions available on the net, in order to see what all the brouhaha from both sides is about. Apparently, Obama really hurt himself, which doesn’t surprise me. He is a classic paper tiger, best summed up by The Onion in this great faux “Tiger Beat” cover story–which, btw, brilliantly anticipated the “Britney/Paris Hilton” comparison that so rankles the Pied Piper candidate now. Like them, he is “famous for being famous.”

I thought I should link to this great column from the Boston Herald, from which I swiped the line that entitles this post. I also liked the subtitle of that column: “Smart money shouldn’t be on Obama.” Correct, and as I said, I have very expensive lunch tastes, sucker. I like Almas caviar on my toast.

RELATED: This highly amusing video from Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” which brilliantly anticipated the whole Obamessiah phenomenon–way back in 1979.

NOTE TO SELF: Always check in on “Day By Day” before writing first post of the day….

UPDATE: Neo-neocon has some professional psychological observations here and here

Obama sounded almost as airy as a Miss America contestant when he named his wife and grandmother as two of the three wise people whose counsel he would seek as Chief Executive (the third was his very typically “nuanced” refusal to choose a third).

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