Obamaland

My mother keeps me up on what the fringe right is up to. Apparently, our President's actual name is "Kenya Bob", and he was a darling child much loved in the Nairobi market places. Then there is Obamaland; it would seem that the quick minds of Limbaugh et alii have seen through the persiflage and divined that Mr. Obama has the intent to rename the USA "Obamaland". My mother told me this. For the first time, I laughed out loud and unrestrainedly right at her, and I said "You are not that stupid!" I was taking a chance. I mean, she is not stupid at all, nor has she dementia. She does the Sunday NY Times crosswords yet, and she is not a fool. I rarely - if ever - ever said that something she said was stupid. In fact, I never said such a thing in my life. I may have thought it was stupid; indeed, very stupid, but I never said so right into her face. But I did. And I had to embellish it, too. I said that it was ever thus with dictators: Hitler changed the name of Germany to Hitlerville, Mussolini changed "Italy" to Mussolini Acres, and Franco was just on the verge of officially changing "Spain" to Francisco's Bide-a-Wee when he passed. Even now, the infamous Hugo Chavez who had the audacity to make constitutional changes by the radical means of a popular vote - not going through an electoral college or some such class institution - has a nefarious plot to eventually re-name Venezuela as "Carmen Miranda Meadows". She laughed sheepishly and said, "Well, I don't believe that, Obamaland. That is stupid. But..."