(Cross-posted at Blue Commonwealth)
Back when I was a young comic book reading whipper-snapper, I remember Superman's freaky enemy, Bizarro. In the upside-down and backwards Bizarro world that he came from, as Jerry Seinfeld described it in the Seinfeld episode "The Bizarro Jerry": "Up is down, down is up. He says 'Hello' when he leaves, 'Good bye' when he arrives."
Although Bob McDonnell did not start his response to Obama's State of the Union with "Goodbye", the whole presentation kind of struck me as the Bizarro Obama giving a very different kind of an address from a vaguely familiar but off-kilter world.
In Governor Bob's Bizarro world, minorities stand behind him and nod approvingly, like Tonto to his Lone Ranger -- unlike the real world where he only received 9% of the black vote last November.
In the Bizarro General Assembly set up for this speech, there is no opposition -- everyone is a supporter, clapping wildly and continually like trained seals on crack. A little different from the real SOTU, where President Obama had to address himself to both supportive Democrats and cynical Republicans.
kindler :: RoboBob in Bizarro World
In this strange world, a new governor who refuses to let his state know how he is going to come up with the cash to fill a massive hole in his budget can dispense words of wisdom to a president laying bare his soul about the challenges in the national budget.
In Bob's Bizarro World, Thomas Jefferson is cited as if he were some kind of a knee-jerk right-winger. In the real world, through his career and Regent University master's thesis, McDonnell has sharply rejected the separation of church and state established first in Jefferson's Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, one of our third president's proudest achievements.
Bizarro Bob World is a place where all the most sacred conservative axioms go unchallenged, like Scripture. It's a utopia unscathed by the filth of unwashed Democrats -- kind of like those exclusive country clubs that our Republican friends like to frequent.
It's a place where a handsome man with a soothing tone can reassure you that you needn't fear the anarchy of liberal-led society because you can find a haven in a Richmond auditorium where everyone is happy and clapping and there is no dissension. (Who needs dissension? Okay, back to Thomas Jefferson and that Bill of Rights thing...)
I don't blame the Repubs one bit for propping this guy up for his Potemkin Village SOTU response. Gov. Bob reminds you of a kindly uncle - well, if your uncle were an android. He has nothing much to say, but he says it so nicely. I wish I lived in this Bizarro world too, where everyone cheered wildly every time I pronounced some stale ideological bromide. What a happy place that would be!
But alas, we do not live in Bizarro world, but in the real world. A place where we have a bold young president taking on enormous challenges with no help whatsoever from his not-so-loyal opposition. All that opposition has to offer up is the same tired old vision of a city on a hill with another phony-baloney actor telling us how all our problems will be solved if we just believe in tax cuts, guns and Jesus.
So, sorry I won't be joining you in your happy little world, Bob. Goodbye to all that - or maybe I should say, Hello?