Lives in Idaho and writes for Moscow Daily News

This writer lives in Idaho and writes for Moscow Daily News.
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Comedian Chris Rock appeared on ABC’s morning gab show (my, it’s hard for the right-thinker even to say, let alone watch) “The View” and spoke out in favor of--true story!--bullying.
“Without bullying you don’t have Microsoft or a cure for cancer or...(any) comedians either,” he said. ”Only through overcompensation (from bullying) is AIDs cured. The Empire State Building would only be four stories tall. If you think America is behind now, just get rid of the bullies.”
Rock was addressing, however bluntly, the heightened concern about schoolyard bullying and the nationwide spate of laws meant to curb it. And his words were, if imprecise, rather welcome in an age of intrusive nanny-statism.
He has a point: Certainly adversity and isolation, if not outright cruelty or abuse, may contribute to the making of a Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, J.R. Simplot or...maybe Barack Obama?
Leaving aside his childhood (his own youthful tales lean more toward identity confusion and alienation than persecution) the President has a public history with bullying dating back to his U.S. Senate days, and his floor explanation of his vote against confirming now-Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts:


“(Roberts) did say he doesn’t like bullies and has
always viewed the law as a way of evening out the
playing field between the strong and the weak....I
was impressed because...I view the law in much the
same way....
“I want to take (him) at his word that he doesn’t like bullies.... But given the gravity of the position...
and of the decisions in which he will participate.... (t)he bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination.”

Why on earth would a young senator be, so to speak, bully-ragging a future Chief Justice about bullying?
The fact is that adversity is like having Joe Biden as Vice President: We all have to face up to it sooner or later.
The question is how we deal with it: In All-American Huck Finn/Ronald Reagan style, with a wink, a grin and a fare-thee-well? Or with ruthless determination, like a Russian oligarch? Or an air of remove and a tiny chip on one’s shoulder and... maybe a spot of vindictiveness in the mix?
To the conservative palate most everything the President does is salted with a dash of spite. The reeking bloat of the health care bill was sold to us not as an upgrade or cost-saver but as a poison-pill retribution to big insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
The same with the rancid “green energy” and “financial reform” bills, both of which are about neither of either. The former is about inserting federal fingers into the oil and coal money pie; the latter is about more control and obstruction of commerce in the U.S., and about the fake self-expiation of its two sponsors, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, for the half-baked lies and crimes they concocted prior to the 2008 crash.
Obama offers his blessings over these slops as merely the just desserts of hoggish capitalists. His precious manner is one of the pipsqueak-turned-lunchroom-monitor who issues demerits to his lessers yet awaits a ride home from his mother after school.
The petulant, imperious pose--actually a screen for faint-heartedness--only aggravates problems at home and abroad, as when he spurns the company, say, of BP chief Tony Hayward or Arizona’s Gov. Brewer, or Israel and England’s prime ministers. Recall that he scorned and belittled Gen. David Petraeus too, when Petraeus worked for Bush; now he hopes to follow the good general to victory--re-election victory, that is--in 2012.
The President says he has experts to tell him “whose ass to kick;” and he has Congress and the Justice Department to carry out the beatings. Bully-ragging, brow-beating, pettifogging, pique. There are plenty of real problems out there and real trouble-makers to take to task.
A confident President, and a real leader, wouldn’t have to ask.