In which the author questions the Emperor's decree abolishing the most intimate right to privacy...[BOSTONHERALD] There was a time when candidate Barack Obama was still properly in awe of the office he sought, and of the opportunity it offered to uplift Americans by the power of his example.
As Robert Frost might have put it, he was fast approaching a point where two roads diverged, and had he chosen the one less traveled by, what a difference it might have made in the kind of president he has become.
But to paraphrase the Greek poet Bion, Obama did not acquire the office; it acquired him, until he became what he is now, an imperious, self-absorbed emperor whose timid sycophants dare not let him know his garments are on fire.
How tone-deaf our 44th president has become.
Can he not see himself as others see him?
Forget him scolding Cambridge cops for having “acted stupidly” before he had any facts; erase from your mind the image of him doing the wave with Raul Castro, a Communist dictator, while Brussels was under ruthless assault by terrorists; forget how days later he was dancing the tango in Buenos Aires while the world remained traumatized by those bloody attacks; forget how he continued his golf game after learning New Hampshire journalist James Foley had been beheaded by ISIS.
He seemed so above it all.
Now, as the sun begins to set on his incumbency, he wades into the explosive issue of permitting transgendered individuals to decide which bathrooms they want to use, flagrantly ignoring the obvious dynamics of throwing everyone together in an atmosphere that’s intensely personal.
Make no mistake, it’s not the least bit hateful for anyone to feel uncomfortable, embarrassed or fearful upon seeing a conflicted interloper walking through the bathroom door of his or her own choice.
But Obama is now urging schools around the nation to embrace that scenario as normal.
