Here and There

Kathleen Parker’s column at TownHall.com is VERY good today… and VERY funny. Titled “Vlad, You’ve got mail,” the column consists solely of three letters (e-mails?) to Putin from Dubya, The Obamanon, and John McCain. Ms. Parker has adopted the stylistic phrasing and mannerisms of the respective men, and herewith a couple of excerpts:

From President George W. Bush:

Dear Vlad:

Beijing is weird. First of all, you can't breathe the air. Second, how 'bout those drummers? Sure, they're perfect, but that's the point. A billion Chinese see 2,000 drummers in sync and say, "Well done, my little emperor son." I see 2,000 drummers all moving with one motion and I'm thinking: "Whoa." Can anybody say MIL-I-TAR-Y PRE-CI-SION?

Hey, which reminds me. What's up with Georgia? This is not good, Vlad. You and I have had our moments. And, OK, fine, your dog's bigger than mine. A lot bigger. Stronger and faster, too. We got it. But you can't just go invading democratically elected countries that are U.S. allies. You can't have everything, Vlad. If you don't stop, I'm going to have to do something and you know I don't want that. What I want is for you to not make me look like a fool.

[…]

From Sen. Barack Obama:

Dear (Former) President Putin:

I'm sorry to be writing this e-mail instead of meeting you in person, preferably in the Oval Office, where I belong. Soon, soon.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the foregoing, I felt it imperative that I express my deep concern about Russia's invasion of the tiny, democratically elected sovereign nation of Georgia. It would appear that you are not familiar with my platform for change and hope. War does not fit into this template and I am quite frankly at a loss for words to express my deep, deep distress.

[…]

Please picture me looking very serious when I say that I respectfully request you to calm down. Life is but a flicker in time and we're but actors strutting and fretting. That is to say, we're all on this planetary journey together and our karma is interrelated and interdependent. Thus, it would seem that our differences are best resolved through words, not bombs.

It is said that war is a failure of diplomacy. I would submit that it is also counterintuitive. If my Kenyan father and my Kansan mother and my multinational upbringing taught me anything, it is that we are all One. That said, I am The One the world has been waiting for -- and you are, quite frankly, blocking my chi.

I won’t give away the whole point of the column by posting McCain’s letter… which consists of only nine words… so there’s simply NO way to excerpt it and preserve the point. You just gotta go read it!

―:☺:―

I had a follow-up with Dr. Thompson (my dentist) yesterday and I’m going to have some additional artificial bone material added to my collection at the end of this month. There’s nothing abnormal or wrong in play here, just a bit of augmentation to the work previously done. This next procedure won’t be quite the production the last event was… just an incision in my gums that will be closed with a couple of sutures after the additional bone is added. And this impending procedure only requires a local anesthetic… no World Class Drugs this time, although that is an option. I declined when offered, but this morning I’m thinking “Wow. Those were some GREAT drugs. Maybe I shouldn’t have turned ‘em down!” (Jes kiddin’, Gentle Reader, jes kiddin’!) (Sorta)

―:☺:―

Michael Phelps celebrates his victory with a world record time of 1:54.80 in the men's 200-meter individual medley final at the US Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, Neb., Friday, July 4, 2008. (AP Photo)

I’ve often said I have an immediate grasp of the obvious… and that’s not a bad quality to have. So, it’s in that spirit that I’m offering the observation that Michael Phelps is THE story of the 2008 Olympiad, so far. The man has just been freakin’ awesome, in the fullest sense of the word. Or, as Joe Posnanski of The Kansas City Star puts it… “Phelps making the perfect look routine”:

The English language is running out of words to describe just how good Michael Phelps is at this swimming thing. Today (Tuesday night in Kansas City), he swam the 200 butterfly in 1 minute, 52.03 seconds, a world record, his fourth gold medal of this Games, the record-setting 10th gold medal of his Olympic career. Four others had won nine golds: Americans Mark Spitz (swimming) and Carl Lewis (track and field), Finland’s Paavo Nurmi (track and field) and the Soviet Union’s Larissa Latynina (gymnastics). That seemed like a good day’s work.

Then there was the relay. Almost precisely one hour later, Phelps led off the remarkable United States 800-meter relay team, which won gold by more than five seconds and blasted the world record by almost that much. Phelps swam the fastest 200-meter split in history (of course) and gave his teammates a 2 1/2 -second lead. This happened barely 10 minutes after he stood on the medal stand to collect his butterfly gold.

So, if you’re counting, Phelps has now won five gold medals at these Games (all in world-record time). He has now won 11 gold medals in his career. That’s two more gold medals, incidentally, than the entire nation of India, which has more than one billion people. He has now won 13 Olympic medals overall, an American record.

Un-bee-leeb-able. And such a joy to watch!

The American women gymnasts, on the other hand, provided the counterpoint to Phelps’ success last night with heart-breaking errors that cost them the team gold medal.

BEIJING — It came down to the last event, the last tumbling pass, the last landing, the last tilt of the head, the last smile.

For the U.S. women's gymnastics team, it came down to a few missteps, and, as is usually the case in a sport of precision and grace, those stumbles made all the difference.

The U.S. lost the gold medal to China 188.9 to 186.525. Simple but glaring mistakes were the Americans' undoing. They may have had prettier routines, but the Chinese were more consistent

[…]

It wasn't close.

Four years of training came down to the floor exercise, an event which the U.S. usually dominates with its high-flying routines and rhythmic dance moves. But all three Americans stepped out of bounds. Somehow, they could not do what they had done thousands upon thousands of times: Stay inside the white lines.

A silver medal ain’t nothing to sneeze at… but it’s a heartbreaker when you’re expecting gold. These Olympic Games have been supremely entertaining, and I’ve simply been mesmerized… all throughout the night and into the wee smalls, as it were.

(photo credit: Gymnasts – The Seattle Times)

Update: I'll quote an e-mail I received a few minutes ago from Deborah Hendrick: "Buck, the hand can be quicker than the eye. I think you put up a photo of Australian swimmer Eamon Sullivan, instead of Michael Phelps." And she was right... the photo of Sullivan I originally posted has been replaced with one of Phelps. Thanks, Deborah.