"Coronation" Minus One

"You all ready for the coronation tomorrow?" Mr. Duff asked snidely from his desk in the sports department, "All hail King Obama!"

I didn't vote for Obama, but there's something I don't like about Duff's attitude. I have a hard time telling sometimes whether he means some of the extreme things he says or if he's putting people on like a troll to get a rise out of them. But something sounds like sincere bitterness in his voice today.

"They're treating him like he's greater than Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, and he hasn't done anything! He hasn't done a single thing!"

"I don't know," was my answer, "It looks like he's been doing a lot of Bush's job for the past few weeks."

"And what's the first thing he's going to do? Let gays back in the military? That's important? And then he's going to make it easier for the terrorists to attack us. This is an evil guy who's not going to protect us."

Mr. Peepers popped in at this point. His instinct is always to provoke people, so he started humming "We Shall Overcome" in Duff's direction. That's a King song, not an Obama one, but Duff reacted as if Peepers were doing his "Ba-rack O-ba-ma" song.

"They didn't do any of this when Bush became President," Duff protested. Now he was getting historically tone-deaf.

"Why would they?" I asked.

"At least he protected us," Duff huffed.

Maybe I missed an early round of ranting, but I was surprised when it was over that Duff hadn't trotted out his usual claim that Obama was a "Moose-lim." So maybe he's softening after all. But I guess I'm not. As I said, I didn't vote for Obama and I don't share many people's faith in him, but I can't abide George W. Bush being compared favorably to anyone.

"So why don't you go down to Texas Wednesday and kiss his ass?" I suggested. But Mr. Duff is hard to perturb. He lacks Mr. Right's self-righteous defensiveness. As long as he makes his point he doesn't feel a need to answer every comment aimed at him. While Mr. Right needs to prove he's right, Duff probably doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks. That's sort of admirable, or at least pragmatic. Nevertheless, I hope he's not in the office tomorrow afternoon. I want to maintain my critical distance from Obama, and that gets more difficult when anti-Obama ranting reaches a level that makes you want to bash someone's head in. Meanwhile, the countdown continues....