A Very Special Monday Nooner
by Barry Friedman
Budding Breasts
(The Obama Administration on the sidelines)
It’s tough—so, so tough—to talk about this, this country, this administration, this political, polymorphous game it plays with pusillanimousness without weeping big, unrequited tears. In my mind—and it is a fertile, agile mind, as many of you know—when I look at this White House, yes, I see sloth and a great, great deal of—you know ... this is so hard, this language is, to communicate, to say, to declare—boom, boom and rah, rah and chants. They come, not from the field, where great leaders spill and show and leave their presence, but from the sidelines, where this administration ponders and … thinks. I expect to see nubile young cheerleaders in sweaters with budding breasts—I, too, once had them—jumping up and down with pompoms, urging, cajoling.
It sounds good, like the words of a stranger, late at night, at the end of a bar—and, yes, I have heard those, too--but what about the game?
What of the scandals?
I have chants, too:
“Push ebola back, Push ISIS back … waaaaaaay back!”
“Two, four, six, eight, whether it’s Benghazi or Holder, when will Obama come straight?”
And then I put the pompoms down and weep some more.
Where—the agile mind, the hopeful mind, the yearning mind--wants to know: where’s the gipper, where’s the giddy in the giddy-up, where’s the reassuring hand up and down a country’s spine, rubbing, caressing, cupping, that says, “There, there stallion, there, there soul, there, there, America, life will be okay. Daddy’s here”?
I long for that stroke, I long for that daddy. I had that daddy. We all did.
Oh, heart, to have it again. Oh, heart, to feel those budding breasts pushing, once again, against a letter jacket while the team pushes it in the end zone