10/20/2010, 2:11 pm
By Oleg Atbashian
First published on Right Network
Tired of denying the obvious, makers of the popular TV sitcom The Office have admitted that Scranton is indeed the birthplace of vice president Joe Biden, and that countless parallels between their hilarious episodes and the daily interactions of a group of idiosyncratic characters in Barack Obama's Oval Office are not coincidental. Unable to process all the rich comedy ore oozing out of the White House, Office producers have given up rewriting it in allegoric terms and decided to go with a straight reenactment in a new side-splitting and faster-paced spin-off - The (Oval) Office.
The cast of characters include president Barack (Barack Obama), who thinks he's the coolest, funniest, best president ever - which, of course, makes him the uncoolest, most obnoxious and annoying president as far as the country is concerned. Salesman David (David Axelrod) loves sabotaging his goofy and naive cube-mate Joe (Joe Biden). Rahm (Rahm Emanuel) started as a self-possessed chief of staff, but quickly figured that he'd be better off running for the mayor of Chicago.
Supporting staff include an office alcoholic, a love-struck slut, an uncouth slob, an ambivalent kleptomaniac, a melancholic loser, a formerly closeted homosexual, and a bitter first lady with an always inappropriate, out-of-this-world garish wardrobe accented by bullet-studded boob belts.
Spoiler alert: do not read further if you'd rather be continuously surprised by the news coming from the real-life Oval Office.
In the kick-off episode of The Oval Office titled "Big Effing Deal," Barack must confront the consequences of a terrible decision made three years earlier. While on the campaign trail, he promised to pay for everyone's healthcare, housing, and education, in addition to creating millions of high-paying jobs - simply because he likes playing the hero, even when it entails making promises he can't possibly keep. A prisoner of instant gratification, Barack lives in the moment, oblivious to the ramifications of his actions.
Barack's stumbling, unconvincing answer is that he imagined he'd spend enough of everyone's money to create prosperity beyond his wildest dreams. But the truth is that the president and his constituents engaged in mutually beneficial self-deception: Barack allowed the voters to imagine he'd be their deep-pocketed, unlikely savior, and deluded themselves into thinking a community organizer who never held a real job could make their dreams come true.
Before Barack could come clean he first had to endure the guileless exuberance of voters convinced that he was the magic man with the keys to their future. They sang, they danced, they rapped, they offered heartrending testimonials about how the pseudo-divine intervention of their "guardian angel" helped them resist the allure of drugs and dropping out of school. It was almost as if they all conspired to make Barack feel like the worst human being in the world.
But it is hard to shame a shameless man, so Barack didn't seem too torn up when he finally admitted that the promised jobs didn't exist, that all the nation's money had been wasted on the pie-in-the-sky stimulus scheme, and there wasn't a penny left in the government's coffers to pay for anyone's healthcare, college tuitions, mortgages, or even social security. However, he would be happy to give them the world's worst consolation prize - a gigantic chart of negative job growth that, if flipped backwards or placed against the mirror, would show how great the economy might have been if the government would get out of people's way and allow them to take care of themselves.
Obama's accomplices on this voyage of soul-crushing disappointment were a team of mainstream media journalists. They knew damn well that Barack wouldn't be able to live up to his lofty promises, yet adorably got swept up in the excitement and exhilaration of his beautiful lie all the same. Later on, they also helped Barack see the upside of his deception - a disproportionate number of Americans have awakened to the need to take their lives into their own hands, without counting on a sweet-talking big-government sugar daddy to help them.
Barack wasn't the only president whose best intentions went horribly awry. In the episode's flashback, congressional Democrats cunningly tricked the previous president George into supporting a program of giving houses to people who couldn't afford them. In the end, they couldn't pay what they didn't have. It all ended in a laugh riot with the collapse of the world economy, humiliating George and helping Barack win the presidency.
Joe Biden hasn't been given much to do this season. He's always funny, but he seldom scores more than a few lines per episode. Hopefully that is about to change.
In the final scene Barack chastises Joe for his extensive use of baby talk around the Oval Office. For a short while, the president acts like an adult but his cold pose quickly dissipates when Biden repeats Barack's earlier trick and flips his voter approval chart upside down to make it look better. This makes Barack smile. After all, who of us hasn't made an impossible, empty promise and then tried to cover it up with more lies and deliberate self-delusion? Admit it, there's a little Barack Obama in each of us.
