As we are still more than a week from the next presidential primary, the candidates have way too much time to fill with anecdotes, and some are tripping over little things like facts and
statements deemed insensitive, dishonest, and/or elitist.
While Barack Obama is “clarifying” his remarks issued to the San Francisco elite that hicks in Pennsylvania are drawn to guns and religion because they’re broke, ignorant bigots, Hillary Clinton now describes herself as a woman of the people because she says she shot guns as a child after going to church.
Of course, a truth meter has to be applied to any of their comments nowadays as their words sometime require a “suspension of disbelief”. It’s amazing that Hillary and Obama feel they need to embellish their pasts in order to impress us. It’s sad that they feel they can embellish, as we’re all too stupid to catch them in their false braggadocio.
As many of you know, I’m in the preliminary stages of a political campaign myself. I can only image what you’d think of me should I make up stories about my relatively uneventful past.
Before I start, many of you have asked if I’m related to Rosa Parks. It turns out my great-grandfather changed our last name in her honor. While some have brought up the fact that he did so long before Mrs. Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, I think it important we honor the spirit in which this story is given.
I’ve never met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as Hillary
alleges. However, during my lifetime, I have met a few famous people.
While working on my first summer job on the stage crew at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I briefly met jazz legend George Benson, who was dining at Alice’s Restaurant across the street after a concert. I haven’t told anyone, but I noticed a dirty fork at what was to be his place setting and swapped it for mine, of which I later asked a waitress to be replaced. Who knows, that morsel stuck to the fork could have contained a small but potent molecule of salmonella. I probably saved George Benson’s life.
I also met the late legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein the following summer. We became friends when he saw the high school t-shirt I was wearing. It turns out, my high school and the one he attended were rivals, and thus we hit it off.
At one point, we were talking after a concert with some student musicians and he told us about his days as a youth, playing piano for Billie Holiday for $5 a night. I asked him if he could give us a sample, and he later sat in on piano with the band playing at a post-concert party.
As luck would have it, a bolt of lighting later struck the very spot where we were talking, mere minutes after I asked Mr. Bernstein to show us some of his chops. If I hadn’t asked, he might have been killed.
While many of you know I served in the Navy, I don’t talk about all the Black Operations I participated in. Many of them are still classified as Top Secret, thus they can’t be verified easily. There won’t be any witnesses coming forth, as all of our operations had such a low survivability potential, I was the only survivor of our many missions. I won’t receive my Congressional Medal of Honor until 20 years after the mission details are declassified, for national security reasons.
While my medical record today shows I’ve never broken a bone in my body (knock on wood), my Purple Heart medal received for life-threatening wounds obtained in those operations is also classified.
I do know something about climate change.
While living in Guam, my family survived two typhoons. During one, upgraded to super-typhoon status, I was driving to work at our local ABC/Fox affiliate. I could barely see through the windshield, the rain was blowing in sideways, yet I managed to get to the station by sheer instinct. During the drive, I rescued three stranded children, a handicapped old woman, and an ox. You try getting an ox into the back seat of a Hyundai.
Many of you also know I’m an ordained
Reverend.
What you don’t know is that since, while helping translate and ghost write a new Living Bible, I wrote and slipped in a couple of Psalms. I’d share them with you now, but I signed an agreement that precludes me from pre-releasing any of the text.
I have married several Hollywood celebrities (who’ve requested anonymity) and baptized several children of NBA players. I also presided over the funeral of five of Michael Vick’s dogs.
Many of my columns have received Pulitzer consideration, but I told the selection committee to choose candidates who are poor, minorities, and/or women. Over the years, I’ve been paid millions of dollars for my radio commentaries, writings, and television productions. But I’ve found it more gratifying to donate every penny to the United Negro College Fund, Jerry Lewis Telethons, breast cancer and Alzheimer’s research, Greenpeace, and built numerous shelters for battered women and their children.
Now while some of that may be a slight exaggeration, it would appear I could be considered presidential candidate material. What’s scary is what both Hillary and Barack would feel compelled to come back with in this little game of one-upmanship.
Something tells me, knowing these presidential candidates as we do, that the best of the whoppers have yet to come.
