That's why he weeps for Rebecca Johnston, one of Barack Obama's middle class American stories, a mother featured in his half hour television infomercial. While a mysterious unknown videographer, let's call her Leni Riefenstahl, follows Ms. Johnston around her newer home in a suburb of Kansas City, MO, purchased just prior to the Clinton Technology Crash, and to which she and her husband fled, so, as Obama states in narration, without a trace of irony, "she could send her children to good schools," we see her in her kitchen, the most hallowed of American spaces, before a side-by-side refrigerator.
At approximately 3 minutes into the advertisement, Ms. Johnston opens her refrigerator and pointing to each shelf on the inside of the door, states:
"This is where our snacks would go. Gabriela, and then Nathan and then my husband and I, and my daughter, and Ethan my son."The mind reels. "This is where our snacks WOULD go." No clearer sign of the pending Depression than that, friends. A barely stocked refrigerator snack door. God only knows the depletion in the dry goods closet. Ms. Johnston must be too embarrassed to reveal that to Ms. Riefenstahl.
More heart rending is that they have arrived at this bare minimum of snackery at the expense of other things, such as medical attention to her husband's crumbling knee. But, as she says, "He has a torn ACL and meniscus that he walks around with everyday. He was going to have the surgery in June, but we couldn't really afford for him to get the disability pay." Senator Obama tells us "And so they put off the operation, to take care of other things." The snacks.
God Bless These People. AND GODDAMN GEORGE W. BUSH!!! That bastard probably has an entire White House staff just to handle his snacking.
During these dark ages under Bush, her family, upon opening the frig door, has learned that, "If they know this is it for them, for the whole week, then they will make it last longer." The silence of the snacks.
A lower intake of snacks has weakened Ms. Johnston's vicissitude: "I think everybody feels the same way, they would like to see an end in sight to all the worry and the chaos of everyday living. Trying to make ends meet. OK, how much are we bringing in this week?"
It is a pity that Ms. Johnston does not have access to facilities such as they have in Switzerland, which would be more than willing to relieve her of her endless day-to-day existence of monitoring the snacks.
Senator Obama tells us that the Johnstons are not the only ones with a dearth of snacks: "All across the country, I've met families just like Rebecca's getting the kids to school, meeting their mortgage payments, fighting for their families."
Fighting for the snacks.
But Senator Obama has a plan. As he states earlier in the advertisement:
"I will also lay out in specific detail what I'll do as president to restore the long-term health of our economy and our middle class and how I'll make the decisions to get us there."And it's obvious: he will redistribute the snacks. My snacks, specifically.
And what of John McCain? What does he know about snacks and the bare snack shelves? This is a man whose war injuries don't even allow him to pull a Dorito out of a bag and place it in his mouth without all kinds of gymnastic maneuvers. John McCain is not a snacker. He does not GET IT. Nevertheless, he is beholden to Upper Class Snackers, such as Sydney Brillo Duodenum.
Once Obama has redistributed the snacks, everyone will have enough money to repair their knees and, well, just be able to deal with everyday life. After all, that is what truly afflicts the middle class: everyday life. And that is criminal.
