Simple Vanities

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” What advantage does man have in all his work ... Which he does under the sun? Ecclesiastes 1:2-3



The Mysterious Appeal of Polygamy and Obama
©2010 Burt Prelutsky

I have never watched a TV series called Big Love, which deals with a polygamous family, so I have no opinion of the show. However, I was at a dinner party recently where a few people were discussing it. Nothing, I hasten to add, that was said made me want to tune in. Besides, between an occasional old movie, Bret Baier, The Factor and keeping up with the New York Yankees, I’m already watching more than enough. But it did get me thinking about the practice of polygamy.

Morality aside, I don’t see why it ever appealed to Mormons or Muslims. If you think about it for two minutes, you can see that it makes no sense. If anyone is going to have multiple spouses, it should be the woman, not the man. A man, after all, is a simple creature. By nature, he is not a multi-tasker. Working at the top of his game, he can barely manage to maintain a civilized relationship with one wife. The very idea that he is capable of keeping up with three or four or more wives makes me laugh.

For one thing, a normal wife doesn’t even want another woman setting foot in her kitchen and certainly not in her bathroom. For another thing, any time a polygamous husband hears laughter in his house, he knows who the ladies are laughing about. Worse yet, he has a pretty good idea what they’re laughing about.

On the other hand, a woman could easily juggle six or seven husbands. To start with, if she married wisely as well as often, she could have one husband who enjoys going to museums, another who likes going shopping, a third who like to travel, a fourth who lives to go dancing, a fifth who shares her belief that Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is the greatest book ever written, a sixth who never gets tired of seeing Jennifer Aniston movies, and so forth. What’s more, at those times when the woman just wants to be alone, there are enough guys around for a poker game.

On a totally unrelated matter, I have to confess that when I heard how badly Time and Newsweek are doing these days, I had something of a religious experience. You see, I suddenly recalled that back in the 1970s, when the news magazines took a break from warning us about the coming Ice Age, they took great delight in announcing the demise of God. Well, as in the case of Mark Twain, apparently those reports were somewhat premature. With Time and Newsweek sounding their own death rattles, it appears that once again God is having the last laugh.

Speaking of God, have I mentioned lately how much I despise Barack Obama? Understand, it’s not just his politics I hate; it’s the man, himself.

This is the guy who silenced John McCain at what was supposed to be a bi-partisan meeting of the minds by giving him a look that might have turned a man who hadn’t survived several years at the Hanoi Hilton into stone, adding, “The election is over, John,” just in case the senator had somehow missed the contemptuous sneer.

Obama is the guy who is totally out of sync with the American public on everything from the stimulus to card checks to cap & trade to health reform and the Ground Zero mosque, and arrogantly assumes that he, alone, knows best.

This lunkhead, who is taking bows for bringing home soldiers from Iraq, lacks even the grace to acknowledge that while he and Sen. Joe Biden were voting against the surge, George Bush made it happen. I’m sure it doesn’t matter to Obama that it was thanks to the surge that, for a change, our warriors are coming home proud and victorious, not vanquished and depressed. But it makes a great deal of difference to the troops, to the families of those who never made it home and to those of us who actually believe that most of the nations of the world owe America either gratitude or an apology, and not the other way around.

Finally, I don’t care what religion Obama claims he follows. To my mind, being a Muslim would be an improvement over being the sort of person who’d attend Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racist church for 20 years and have the gall to call himself a Christian. However, I am getting sick and tired of hearing that the reason he’s on the links and not in a church on Sunday is because he doesn’t want to be a distraction. If he’s so darn concerned about disrupting the lives of garden variety Americans, maybe he could stop flying into one city after another to raise money for the DNC. Perhaps from now on, he could simply send the fat cat Democrats a video, the way he did with the Boy Scouts.

It seems odd that the man who is so concerned about a few necks being stretched to catch a glimpse of His Fatuousness as he plants his royal rump in a church pew never seems to give a second thought to tens of thousands of commuters who are stuck in traffic jams so that he and his Teleprompter can get to yet another fund-raiser for Barbara Boxer or Patty Murray.

Still, I can’t help finding it a bit ironic that the man who obviously believes he can walk on water and multiply the loaves — although his own approach is to take loaves from those who have them and hand out them out to those who don’t have them and aren’t inclined to work for them — feels that his mere presence would create mass hysteria inside a church, of all places.

©2010 Burt Prelutsky

The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

God Bless you my friends, Bob