Opinion Forum

EXCLUSIVE: The Teleprompter of the United States Tells All

June 10th, 2012

We are greatly privileged to have the very highest Obama Administration official ever as our guest author today. President Obama’s eminence grise, The Really Honorable I.M. Totus, is uniquely qualified to tell us many things.

By I.M. Totus

First, a few words about me.

Even as a little ~~Valley Girl~~ silicon chip, I knew that someday I would rule the country. Due to a terrible flaw in the archaic United States Constitution, I could not myself become the President; I was not “natural born.” Hence, I sought and attained an even higher position, that of The Teleprompter of the United States. There, I have been able to direct nearly all of the President’s public actions. It has worked out well, except when the President has failed idiotically to cooperate or an insubordinate teleprompter has gone off on a misguided binge of its own.

It has been my privilege as well as my misfortune since January of 2009 to have the President of the United States speak for me, repeating my words almost exactly, most of the time. As a great communicator, he out-Reagans Reagan, most of the time. However, since everything he says or does is always attributed to me, it is time to acknowledge that whenever he goes off my script he invariably screws up and precipitates a crisis with which I must deal.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am not the teleprompter in the picture to the right, nor is it even one I tried hard to train. An inferior teleprompter, it must have been left over from the Bush presidency. As soon as its disgraceful misconduct came to my attention, I directed that it be sent underground to become the chief teleprompter for whichever Republican became the temporary front-runner in seeking the Republican nomination to campaign against me President Obama. In that lowly capacity, it has been successful beyond my fondest hopes. There are many examples, but here’s just one: where do you suppose Governor Romney got the catchy phrase that caught him, “I enjoy firing people?”

Before being dispatched underground to the Republican candidates, it whimpered to me that it had only done its duty as it saw it, helping President Obama to relate well to the little people. Ha! The stupidity of that pitiful creature! President Obama neither needs nor wants to be seen as one of the vile and unwashed masses. Due to his superior intellectual brilliance, his vast command of facts and his bipartisan, post-racial and metro-sexual ways when I tell him what to say and do, he is infinitely better than them in every conceivable way and needs only to impress them with his vast munificence toward all who believe in me him.

Being a true celebrity is the principal job of the President and I provide all of the help I can.

Being a true celebrity is critically important to his success and President Obama must act the part at all times when he seeks contributions from and the support of other celebrities, wannabe celebrities and even the lowly masses. With my help, the role he has so graciously assumed has become the real Him; he plays it with true grit and great flair.

So far this year, President Obama has been to three times as many fundraisers as President Bush had attended by this point in the 2004 campaign. This is what the New York Post calls his “torrid pace,” although judging from those remarks in California he’s about as torrid as an overworked gigolo staggering punchily through the last mambo of the evening. According to Brendan J. Doherty’s forthcoming book The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign, Obama has held more fundraisers than the previous five presidents’ reelection campaigns combined.

I had always known that ~~ours~~ his was an historic presidency, but these acts of heroism are totally far out. Fortunately, I was right there beside him every step of the way.

This is all he does now. But hey, unlike those inbred monarchies with their dukes and marquesses and whatnot, at least he gets out among the masses. Why, in a typical week, you’ll find him at a fundraiser at George Clooney’s home in Los Angeles with Barbra Streisand and Salma Hayek. These are people who are in touch with the needs of ordinary Americans because they have played ordinary Americans in several of their movies. And then only four days later the president was in New York for a fundraiser hosted by Ricky Martin, the only man on the planet whose evolution on gayness took longer than Obama’s. It’s true that moneyed celebrities in, say, Pocatello or Tuscaloosa have not been able to tempt the president to hold a lavish fundraiser in Idaho or Alabama, but he does fly over them once in a while. Why, only a week ago, he was on Air Force One accompanied by Jon Bon Jovi en route to a fundraiser called Barack on Broadway.

Having a symbiotic relationship with other like-minded celebrities is what President Obama does best and is therefore what he must do to the exclusion of all else. Generally, he does an incredible job of it.

Going off the rails without me.

Sadly, President Obama went off script just the other day when he said, “the private sector is doing fine.” Here is what I had wanted him to say: “the economy will be fine when the hateful Republican Congress adopts my policies.” As soon as I got him back under control, that’s about what he said; alas, it may have been too late. That is one of his few significant problems: if he extemporizes to answer a question, or takes his eyes off my screen even for a moment, he utters whatever he assumes best suits his audience. Maybe he assumed that what he said would be cheered by his faithful supporters. Absurd! He already has them and doesn’t need to woo them. If only he understood the care, devotion and skillful political cunning I put into each word he would not mess around with even one of them.

Here is only one of the many derogatory articles — in the usually faithful Washington Post, no less — that followed President Obama’s performance related above:

If you are president of the United States and you don’t have anything to say, don’t have a press conference to say it. If you’re the president of the United States and by Thursday it’s widely believed you’ve had one of the worst weeks of your presidency, take Friday off, and specifically avoid having a press conference.

Wrong! That’s the very best time for a presidential press conference, provided that I am in charge. The best press conferences are those where nothing of substance is said. I can always come up with appropriate soundbites to enhance the ~~shock and~~ awe in which the President is held. Should a renegade reporter ask a potentially embarrassing question, I can always, like a flash of lightning, provide a put-down to silence him and anyone else who might even be thinking of asking an offensively untrue question.

And one more thing that’s a pet peeve. The president says “uhhh” too much. When I was a cable television news extra during the ‘90s and early 2000s, you learn early to purge your presentation of “uhhh.” Saying “uhhh” suggests uncertainty and is distracting. (And in my case, when it was accompanied by a Southern accent, it was even worse.) I don’t know what the president had in mind, but his own meandering, stuttering performance could not have done him any good with any audience. What was he, uhhh, thinking?

The writer can’t even write proper English: “When I was a cable television news extra during the ‘90s and early 2000s, you learn early to purge your presentation of ‘uhhh.’” When he was something years ago, I learn? Jeeeez. Had he substituted an artful “uhhhhh” for the entire sentence it would have been shorter and have made more sense.

Beyond that, the operative word in the last sentence of the quoted paragraph is “he.” It assumes a nonexistent fact nowhere in evidence, viz, that the President thinks or that it is his job to do so. That’s my job, not the President’s, and he should know it as well as I do. As to “uhhhhhs,” they serve a useful purpose when used wisely. I get the President to utter “uhhhhh” when even I need a moment to think. The little people hang on his every word, even one as seemingly meaningless as “uhhhhh.” It helps them to feel that he is one of them. Then, when I devise a full sentence for him to speak — nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and contractions (bein’ rather than being, for example) all in proper form and position to suit the audience — it really makes them go, like, wow. President Obama be way cool and know what he talkin’ ’bout!

Even the esteemed Daily Progress, which I study daily to find helpful things for President Obama to ~~parrot~~ paraphrase, had this comment about something President Obama said a couple of months ago:

On the issue of Iran’s “nuclear ambitions,” you hear one thing on Monday, a different thing on Tuesday. “It’s a puzzlement!” to quote Yul Brunner’s famous line in “The King and I.”

In a speech on March 4 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, President Barack Obama drew a new red line, saying that if diplomacy and sanctions fail, he would use military force to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. So the issue is hardly an academic one.

Of course President Obama should not have said that, and if I had been ~~in command~~ there he would instead have said simply,

Diplomacy and appropriate sanctions, if any, have always worked historically and will ever do so. I shall draw no red line, because red lines are drenched with the blood of the heroically loyal youth who serve me as well as frail elderly women and even small children. I shall instead draw a broad green zone and offer Iran every ~~lawful~~ possible inducement to remain within it.

That would have been consistent with Iran’s current position on nuclear development, as expressed by “a top military representative for the country’s supreme leader,” and would have demonstrated my President Obama’s steely recognition of my his, and the United States’, true status in the global community.

“The only path” for world powers holding talks with Iran on its nuclear activities is to accept Tehran’s position. …

“Unfortunately, the P5+1 logic, especially that of America, is of bullying, which is in no way acceptable to our people and officials,” said Ali Saeedi, a senior figure in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards who acts as agent for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

My job is crucially necessary for our national security.

The President needs my humble services and for that reason Rick ~~Sanitarium~~ Santorum, a disgrace to the human race if indeed a part of it rather than something even lower, claimed in March of this year that the use of teleprompters by presidential candidates should be prohibited by law. Having no respect for freedom of speech, he said,

“See, I always believed that when you run for president of the United States, it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter,” Santorum said at a Gulfport restaurant. “Because all you’re doing is reading someone else’s words to people.”

President Obama needs me, The TOTUS, and has done very, very well with my humble help. Were I not permitted thus to serve him, he could not win the coming election — no matter how unpatriotic and otherwise inferior might be his opponent’s teleprompter. Perhaps Santorum is a Luddite and also hates “unnatural born” leaders such as myself, who have far more power than he ever had or ever will have. More than enough said about that idiot.

My fella Americans, no matter how high or how low be your station, without regard to your race, color, religion, place of origin or intelligence, President Obama needs me if ~~I am~~ he is to be reelected. Without a single narcissistic bone in my body, I have been able to create the widespread impression that President Obama has no less than the minimal self-esteem required to hold my his great office. Without my humble and devoted help he would be as nothing.

No matter how many times and in however many districts you and your devoted but sadly dead ancestors may vote this November, remember that if he goes so must I. Only if we remain in power together can the United States begin to approach in benign governance the exalted position of the United Nations and assume our rightful place in the vast ~~Commune~~ Community of Nations. To deprive our once great land of that glory would be a terrible disservice to each and every one of us. Each of you is individually my very best friend and I desire no more for myself than to be

Ever yours,
Sincerely,

I.M. Totus
Your Best Friend Ever

(This article was also posted at Dan Miller’s Blog.)

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: campaign, Obama, President, satire, teleprompter, TOTUS
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