Note: As I write this, I watch Muslims stomp on a picture of our president's face on the
body of a dog on the US flag.
For those of us who have been a part of this
great nation for their entire lives, and those who braved dangerous seas, spent their life savings, and risked persecution
and deportation to come here, we know that there's something special here. This is a place where anything is possible. It's
a culture.
For us, there is nothing more American than Mom, Baseball, and Apple
Pie.
In this country, even now when many mothers are the family's breadwinner
or there is no father, mom is the core of the family. She has our respect, our attention, and our admiration. Unlike dad,
mom can motivate us with a word. No one says anything bad about our mom. I see this in Michelle Obama.
This is not the experience of our president. In fact, I question whether his mother was like the mom we as a nation
share. My mother never had a chip on her shoulder. She loved America. Everything she did she did for her kids. This is not
the mother I see in Stanley Ann who whipsawed her son from man to man and place to place. When my mother died of cancer, I
was on the other side of the country and unable to get to her hospital bedside strictly due to the physical constraints of
time, space, and flight availability: it is something I will regret 'till the day I die. I was not on a book tour and if I
had been, I would have left work -- which I did in my mother's case -- without notice. Our president had more important things
to do.
Baseball, to paraphrase a movie, has brought America through the hard times.
It is a sport which exposes the Obama administration's failed philosophy, for in baseball as in America we work together to
win yet we are quite on our own when it comes to our individual success. There is no lonelier place in any group activity
than the pitcher's mound. There, with each pitch, a single individual determines the fate of his mates and devoted fans. In
baseball, unlike any other sport, there are second, third, and even forth chances to succeed. It is the only sport that has
an action known as a "sacrifice." This is America. This is something our president, sadly, knows nothing of.
Apple Pie. There is nothing like it. It is concieves images of the Forth of July, Summer, and
bounty. It is universal: apples grow everywhere in this country including Hawaii and Alaska. But in 2008, our president yearned
for sweet potato pie. Why? Because he needed to win North Carolina to be elected president. Don't be surprised to find that
the president's taste has turned to Key Lime Pie this year as he needs to lock up Florida and North Carolina is lost to him.
Mom, Baseball, and Apple Pie: these are as alien to our president as he is to America and us
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDw13jWygDo.