I was checking Huffington Post this morning and came upon this Headline:  “Obama Calls Out Limbaugh and Beck.”

Curious, I checked it out, expecting some uncharactistic language, perhaps, from POTUS … some angry challenge not in keeping with the better angels of ANY of our natures.

What I found was that, rather than “calling out” the squid and the whale (you guess which is which), Obama was pretty much saying, in the calmest of ways, that the heated rhetoric was “troublesome” but not without precedent … and not something that he worries too much about.  A far cry from calling anybody out.

And yet here we are … keeping the water boiling … sniping and taking potshots with overheated and misleading headlines … that folks like me click on.

Was I disappointed?  Yes, a part of me wants him to use his intelligence and wit to tear these guys up.  But listening, I am reminded of what actually works over the long haul … and I see the wisdom of staying calm and steady … of behaving like an adult.

That’s one of the biggest ironies of the current political scene, IMHO.  With all its fear mongering and posturing, the GOP has typically pretended to a quasi-parental role.  And many people have lapped it up.  The message is that it’s a big, bad, scary world and Dick and Dicker (aka Dubya) will protect you from all those evildoers.

In reality, that’s a simplistic view of the world that even they don’t actually believe (okay, maybe Dicker did – it’s hard to know).  It’s not a nuanced, adult view, that’s for sure.  And for sure they don’t treat their constituents like thinking adults.  So those GOP “parents” who want to take care of us all … they don’t want us to grow up and think for ourselves.  They don’t want to deal with adults or with nuance and gray areas.  They like a nice, simple black and white world … and yes, I do mean black and white.  And yes, I would argue that they aren’t fully adult themselves.

But they don’t care about my opinion … it is such a foreign way of thinking as to be incomprehensible.  So I admire Obama’s even-handedness.  POTUS can sometimes seem Zenlike in his moderation and balance.  I am so impressed!

On another note … I have been obsessing about iPads a wee bit (mostly because it’s hard to open a news site without being blasted with stories about how great they are).  Whenever I feel the urge to buy, I just think about Droids … and so far, that is doing the trick.  (JBD … are you seriously considering one?  That would help me a LOT … I could satisfy my impulsive craving vicariously!)

Off to Bates today for the Mount David Summit … to hear rpe talk about her thesis and have a quick visit.  Yahoo!