Obama's "Red Line", Onion-style...

The Onion is a satirical website which claims to be "America's Finest News Source".

It is a claim I endorse wholeheartedly, especially after having read the following article, brought to my attention by my sister, whose official title is 'Internet Searcher of all Things That Make Obama Look Ridiculous'.

Buddy's 'red line' ought to have been called a 'sooky-little-girl-pink line', for as much of a threat as it has proven to be in the Middle East, and the White House lawn.

But then, there's the Onion, to put it all in perspective. Read on...

Obama's version of the Bill Clinton 'lip chew'.  

WASHINGTON—Assuring the nation that he was “carefully monitoring the situation,” President Barack Obama expressed his “deep concern” this morning after several hundred Syrian men, women, and children were discovered gassed to death overnight on the White House lawn.  

“The use of chemical weapons on the South Lawn, or anywhere on the White House grounds, is unacceptable, and I strongly condemn these actions,” read a statement issued by the president, which failed to acknowledge his previous stern warnings that any poison gas attacks on civilians within 400 feet of the Oval Office would cross a “red line” that would draw an international response.  

“We have called on the United Nations to conduct a full investigation of the incident, and pending their findings over the upcoming weeks and months, the appropriate parties will be held accountable. For now, our thoughts and prayers go out to those innocent families down by the south fountain and jogging track who are grieving the loss of loved ones today.”  

The latest attack comes more than two years into a bloody conflict on the White House grounds that has seen tens of thousands of Syrian civilians brutally massacred in the Rose Garden, the South Portico, and the Lincoln Bedroom.

I wish I was 1/1000th as good a writer as those at the Onion. Those who can write with such irony, wit and sarcasm, laying bare the blatant hypocrisy for all to see, are people whose talents impress me enormously. And God knows, until 2016 at least, they'll have lots more hypocrisy to expose to the world!

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"Unfortunate Females", The Evening Telegram, May 20th, 1919

The following article, "Unfortunate Females", was published in The Evening Telegram, as it was then known, on May 20th, 1919, the day my father was born.

 

Women of that era had it made! There was absolutely no expectation of responsibility or self-reliance under which they had to belabor themselves. The more trouble they got into, the more eager some man was to shift the blame elsewhere, especially when it came to the demon drink.

 

My sister and I have been doing a little digging around the roots of the family tree these past few days, and she pointed me in the direction of this gem, this glimpse of a bygone era. The style of writing is just delightful. It's nice to see that there was a time when a lady's honour was still chivalrously defended. I'm glad that prohibition went the way of the dinosaur, though.

 

1919.

 

In six years' time, it will have been 100 years since this article was published. All the 'females' of which the writer speaks are long dead, as is he. (I presume the writer was male.)

 

So long ago, yet, someone was sat across the supper table from me earlier tonight whose father probably read this very article in the paper while he was being born.

 

Sometimes, the distant past is not as distant as we think.