Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

We've got a problem in our country with vice presidents, my friends. And I'm talking both past and present. The one we got now, Dick Cheney, can't shoot straight and the one we nearly had, Al Gore, can't think straight.

Cheney's problem is easy to solve: restrict him to meetings held in secure buildings and frisk him when he enters the room. Clearly, it is in our national interest to keep the man from Wyoming from traipsing through an open field with gun in hand. Teddy Roosevelt he's not.

But Gore, that's a horse of a different color. Speaking at a conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on February 12th the former "next president of the United States" (as he likes to describe himself), said - amongst other things - that

·        [the] U.S. had committed “terrible abuses” against Arabs after 9/11

·        [that]Arabs living in America were “indiscriminately rounded up”

·        [typically] on “minor charges of overstaying a visa”

·        [or] “not having a green card in proper order”

·        [then] “held in conditions that were just unforgivable”

And finally, Gore summed up by assuring the crowd that the "abuses" he referred to, "does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country."

Maybe your country, Al - not mine!

The Yiddish word chutzpah has taken on a life of its own in the English language. So common is its usage that one need not translate it anymore. But every once in a while a new example of chutzpah comes up that adds an exponential dimension to the word. To wit, from the William J. Clinton Foundation website comes a job listing for unpaid interns: " If you are an undergraduate, graduate or professional student or a recent graduate with your own strong interest in crucial issues of our day, the Clinton Foundation Intern Program offers a unique opportunity for growth, learning and meaningful service."