The pigeon-poop presidency

The other day while attending the DLD Tel Aviv conference, while investors of varied provenance and the technogeeks who covet their wallets were enjoying themselves as the start-up fest revved up Jaffa Port, I was, not for the first time and probably not the last, pooped on by a pigeon.

I didn’t even quite realize it until some sharp-dressed guy with fancy glasses and a snappy haircut started looking at my pants funny. Then I realized what had happened, and that even if I did have some silly million-shekel idea to promote, I’d just kissed one angel goodbye.

Pigeon crap as metaphor: proof that even in the midst of what seems  to be a ginormous room full of smart people strutting about all glittery and gay, there is bound to be some regrettable shit going down.

With less than two weeks before Americans go to the polls, it got me thinking about the presidency of Barack Obama, a guy who, on the back of tax dollars furnished by the likes of you (if you are a tax-paying American) and me, has made a mess of world politics these past four years. Who, by compromising American’s fragile foreign policy supremacy, has also made things more difficult for Israel and most nations in the Middle East, too.

In my view Obama, even if not “the black Muslim in the White House” that Madonna claims him to be, is on the international stage a card-carrying Arabist. It’s an open secret that the U.S. Dept. of State has long been the residence of two “camps”: the one that throws its weight behind Arab causes, and that concomitantly throws Israel under the bus, and the pro-Israeli camp. At this stage of the “game,” anyone who harbors doubts as to where Obama’s  true loyalties lie has his or her head in the clouds.

Now it emerges that the Human Rights Council of the UN is to call for a boycott of American companies doing business in Israel. Apparently, whereas George Bush never got behind the HRC, Obama wasted no time in doing so once in office.

Fast forward to today in New York City, where an event called Broadening the Conversation aims to promote a broader understanding of Israel. Useful as it is, such a conference would be less necessary if there were a President who paid more than just lip service to the State of Israel.

Obama has enjoyed numerous rounds of golf while black homeless men beg for pennies in the streets of Washington, D.C. and on New York subways…he has gone from talk show to fundraiser and back while America’s image abroad crumbles as fast as his CV does upon the kind of closer inspection most media who aren’t Fox News dare not undertake.

Enough of this crap! At the mention of his name, like “Erdogan,” I have the same queasy feeling I did when the Jaffa pigeon left its calling card all over my Trussardi jeans. The platitudes and prevarications in this campaign are 80% Obama’s, 20% Romney’s.

America will never get the lost time back, and neither will Israel. It is a sadness and a shame that many folks in my home state of California, nominally the most enlightened state in the Union, will fail to wrest themselves from the evil sway of the Obama-nationists. It’d behoove them to remember that the state bird is actually a quayle.