11
Nov

Dear Mr. Obama,

 

I understand you’re kinda new at this racket, so let me say at the outset that I’m willing to give your shameful ignorance the benefit of the doubt, and willing to believe your silly, impetuous actions on Friday will never again be repeated.  But, sir, you’ve been president-elect for barely a week, and you’ve already made no fewer than one enormous miscalculation, one which, try as I might, I simply can’t allow to stand.

You held your first presidential press conference last Friday, and ABC (and, presumably, the other networks as well, though I wasn’t watching those) decided to interrupt programming to carry it live.  The big problem herein (and it’s huge, sir):  the closing minutes of ABC’s finest soap opera “One Life to Live” were sliced off in order to accommodate this, depriving us loyal viewers (the numbers of whom, if recent ratings reports are to be believed, are literally growing slimmer by the day) of what promised to be the sort of electrifying you-can’t-end-it-there Friday cliffhanger that daytime hasn’t offered us in eons.  (Poised to kick some kind of ass this November sweeps, thanks to the sure hand of its fiercely talented head writer Ron Carlivati (whose brazen mastery of the soap form is a wonder to behold), “One Life” has expertly brought five simmering, interwoven plots — Todd and Marty’s twisted and audaciously Gothic (and, according to some, outrageously offensive) “romance”; John’s frantic quest to free Marty from what he perceives to be Todd’s clutches; Jared and Natalie’s race against time to escape from the secret room; and the births of Starr’s and Jessica’s babies — to an explosive boil in the past week, in a breathtaking perfect storm of crashing dominoes and captivating drama.  And last Friday’s episode — which found all five of the aforementioned stories simultaneously hitting their initial climax — was supposed to provide us the orgasmic release we’ve all been waiting months for.)

 

Things were going swimmingly until around 1:48 or so, when you took control of the podium, Mr. Obama, and that pompous ass Charlie Gibson broke in with one of his special reports he loves so much and commenced blathering on about you and some such drivel that easily could have kept until 2:00 — Barack, sir, even with my beloved knockout Laura Wright deservedly back front and center and looking boffo, there’s nothing of consequence going on over at “General Hospital” these days, and you and your posse could have hijacked that entire hour without anyone batting as much as an eyelash over it.  Instead, you chose to horn in on the final act of the most thrilling, suspense-packed soap episode in recent memory to babble on about nothing, and it’s simply not acceptable.

 

Barry, my darling, let’s gab.

 

See, sir, I like you overall.  I live in one of the most Republican-infested counties in the inn-ty-ah state of Texas, and I risked the wrath of my friends and neighbors in actually voting for you, man!  Furthermore — full disclosure and all, you understand — I was able to catch the “One Life” repeat on SOAPnet later that evening, so, ultimately, no harm no foul on this matter.  But don’t let that distract you from the thrust of this missive, Mr. Obama.  You probably don’t get much of a chance to see many soaps, what with your busy schedule saving the world and all, so please allow me to impart unto you one of the basic tenets of the form:  Fridays are traditionally the most exciting day of the soap week, the idea there being that, if you construct the canvas correctly, you torture your audience for a whole weekend, so as — assuming their tingling spines haven’t completely done them in in the meantime — to make your viewers feel like they’ll plainly die if they don’t tune in on Monday, whereupon the build toward the next exhilarating crescendo begins in earnest.  It’s for this reason, sir, that we must agree, right here at the start of your journey as the next leader of the free world, to keep Fridays firmly and inexcusably off limits.

 

Yes, of course, I understand that disasters, of either the natural or man-made stripe, unfold on no man’s time clock.  I’m perfectly at peace with that.  But, Mr. Obama, hear me, please:  Rambling, unimportant, uninteresting presidential press conferences — events in which, for example, the most newsworthy revelation is a discussion about which kind of dog (!!) your family plans to acquire once you take up residence on Pennsylvania Avenue early next year — do.  People actually schedule those.  And because that’s true, it seems equally true that choosing a time more amenable to all of our itineraries can be an eminently facile endeavor.  (If you need further assistance in this matter, may I suggest that you cut in to the late-morning timeslot occupied by “The View,” where your interruption carries with it the added bonus of knocking that infinitely ass-chapping Hasselbeck heifer off the air?)  However you choose to proceed here, sir, please understand that Friday afternoons between the hours of 12 and 4pm (that’s Washington time, Barack, just so you don’t get confused in the future) must be held sacrosanct.

 

If this is what your critics mean when they point out your lack of experience on the world stage, then I (and your country) will view it as an all-out victory if you consider yourself twice as knowledgeable here at the end of this post as you did at the start of it.  What’s the old saying, sir?  Something like “those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”?  I implore you, Mr. Obama:  please don’t repeat this one.  In this era in which the whole of network-created daytime television finds itself on the ropes, your cooperation on this issue may well be vital to the survival of a uniquely American art form.  Word to the wise.

 

Sincerely,

 

the Buzz.

 

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