He...eee...re's Barry...

I've really made it my business to stay quiet on politics since the election. I didn't vote for President Obama and made no apologies for my Republican leanings. Okay, they are not leanings, they are full-fledged tilt. However, I also made it very clear that I wanted to -- and would -- give him a chance.

I had hope that his promise of change would be the boost we all needed -- no matter our political persuasion. I understand, though, that change doesn't come overnight -- though many people seemed to think it would. I know that the wheels of government run slowly -- and I know that the more fingers the government has in the pie, the slower those wheels go. So, it's been with much trepidation that I've watched the money we don't have being spent in staggering amounts. If you or I printed a bunch of money in our basements, we'd be arrested.

I don't know enough about finance to understand all the ins and outs but I do know that throwing money at problems doesn't always fix them -- especially when the money is going into the same state and federal hands which have screwed everything up in the first place (and I'm not even going into Porky Pig land). I always go back to the saying, "give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he can eat for a lifetime." That's definitely not what's going on nowadays. We're becoming a nation of enablers -- people talk about the greed of Wall Street and big corporations but the greed which is going on in homes across America is disheartening.

The United States of Gimme.

Anyway, what's brought me to speaking up is Obama's appearance on The Tonight Show. He made an unwise comment concerning Special Olympics -- I'm not going to castigate him for that because we've all made slips of the tongue and said something we really shouldn't have said -- or didn't mean to say. I don't know how he feels about the organization but I'm going to assume it was simply an offhand comment that was simply a poor choice of words.

The real issue to me is that our President -- and you noticed I've said our because whoever is in the White House is our president -- was on The Tonight Show at all. Yeah, I know Obama wants to be hip but is he still campaigning for something? I pretty much thought he had attained the office of one of the three most powerful men in the world -- the US president, the Russian president and any nuclear submarine commander. Am I alone in being surprised that a sitting president would appear on what is basically an entertainment show? What's next -- The Daily Show (where he can really get his ass kissed) or maybe on Bill Maher -- who I used to love before he became so self-important and disrespectful.

I'm sure there are an equal number of folks out there who are as thrilled about The Tonight Show appearance as there are those who are disturbed by it. But, here's what really bugs me about the whole thing:

I can't tell you how many people have said that they disliked former president George W. Bush because he was glib, because he had a "smirky little smile", because he didn't take the job seriously, because he didn't really care. Yet here we are with a sitting president laughing it up on a stupid TV show (no offense to Jay Leno -- he's doing what he gets paid to do -- entertain).

But that's different, some will say.

And, I ask, in what way?

Seriously, how?

The world is crumbling and our president -- a person, no matter who he (or, one day, she) is should not only get respect but give it -- and he's trying to up his popularity by appearing on a non-news program (though news is a slippery slope these days).

Not cool. Not cool at all.