The View vs. The Boy Scouts

Once again the President forgot that he was the President of the United States of America. He managed to totally strip the dignity of the office by spending an hour on The View. Remember when the country once thought it outrageous when MTV asked President Clinton if he wore briefs or shorts? Today, however, I have heard hardly a whimper over Joy Behar asking a sitting President his opinion of Snooky, some girl from the Jersey Shore tacky reality show. And this is the man who is the leader of the greatest country on the earth.

Obama’s supposed strategy behind being on The View was to try to regain his popularity with woman, especially independent females. I just heard that the typical viewer of The View is a 59 year old female. Makes sense since younger women are at work, not watching day time TV. The other unstated goal of doing this show, this week, was to stop all the news coverage from AZ over illegal immigrants.

Whatever the goal, I think doing this show was a major mistake. It’s not that he got bad press, per se, but rather he could have garnered better press with a larger audience by doing something else. In order to be on this talk show he passed up the chance to speak in person at the Boy Scout Jamboree celebrating their 100th birthday. You can’t get any more Norman Rockwell than a photo op of the President with a group of Boy Scouts. Sure, Boy Scouts don’t vote, but their parents do. And instead of targeting only women, as he did with his appearance on The View, spending time with Boy Scouts would have helped shore up his image with a larger group of women and men.

Based on his past choices, I can only conclude that this was too middle class for Barack. Boy Scouts probably have the same place in his mind as the gun toting, bible loving, beer guzzling middle class he discussed so derisively during the campaign. Boy Scouts aren’t PC while The View is. In fact, he has made poor decisions like this starting within hours of being sworn in. Obama is the first President in 50 years to not attend the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball, snubbing dozens of Medal of Honor vets. He did, however, find time to go to 10 other balls, many of them filled with Hollywood and music celebrities rather than just our own war heroes.. But Boy Scouts and vets, don’t feel too alone; google Obama and “snub” and you get over 4.6 million hits!

Now every President gets more requests then they can handle but for this President there is an unsettling trend in what he does vs. what he snubs. Boy Scouts should feel honored to share a long list of people and nations snubbed by President Obama including Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu, the entire country of Spain, former Prime Minister of England Gordon Brown, French Prime Minister Sarkozy, all US veterans by skipping a traditional laying of the wreath at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day and D-Day rememberances, a lunch with the King of Norway along with other standard events normally attended by Nobel Prize winners, Indonesia, NASA, wounded vets by skipping a visit to an overseas hospital in favor of a trip to the gym, all DC churches as he has yet to find one to attend regularly, even the prestigious Grid Iron annual dinner claiming he was “too busy”. Yet this President found the time to go on an hour long daytime talk show and answer Joy Behar’s question about Lindsay Lohan prison sentence. Yeh, seriously, she asked him about that.

Anyway, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that Obama does not share the same American experiences that most of us live. You may have disagreed with Clinton's politics but he understood middle America, hell, he was middle Southern America. Reagan and Bush2 also knew what was important not just in DC or New York or Chicago but out in the boonies. But Obama simply doesn’t understand the importance of our long-standing allies, or the reverence for churches and synagogues, soldiers and veterans, NASA and even the Boy Scouts. He did not grow up among these old fashioned symbols and values of the America of our parents and grandparents.

Is this a black/white thing? I don’t think so as there are a lot of African American soldiers and Boy Scouts and church attendees. No, instead I think it is an elitist attitude combined with the types of community he served as a community advisor, not to mention spending his formative years in Jakarta. But go out into the sticks, the suburbs, the farms and the small business and you will still find the America honored by Norman Rockwell. Or go to a Tea Party and you will meet Americans who still believe in truth, justice and the American way of life. An America that still respects the police, honors their parents, prays in their churches and synagogues, salutes the flag, tries to live within their means, educates their children to believe in these things just as their parents taught them and, even in this bad economy, hope that their children might have a better life.

And the scary truth is that Obama doesn’t get this. He doesn’t seem to understand these values and their importance to our lives. So when he came charging in with his speeches of hope and change we didn’t understand that it wasn’t the hope and change that many people had anticipated. It couldn’t have been, for he was starting from a different set of values, a different way of looking at America than most of us. But now we know better. While we are stuck with him for two more years we should at least make sure we have a new Congress, one that will block his more progressive changes and try to maintain the America we love.

Meanwhile Boy Scouts, don’t feel too badly for getting only a short taped speech from Obama instead of a visit for your big event. Instead you should be proud to be included with the great men and women, many true heroes, who have been snubbed by President Barack. And as a former 7-year Girl Scout, I want to wish a very Happy Birthday to all Boy Scouts - may you have another 100 years teaching honesty, character, pride, self sufficiency and all the other wonderful things you teach to the young men of tomorrow.