In a minute or so we’ll get to President Joe Biden and whether his casual off-the-cuff remarks can trigger the end of the world.
I mean the ultimate showdown between the United States and Russia.
You know, nuclear-tipped rockets flying and landing back and forth…you and me right in the middle.
All because our president suffers from loose lips.
A foggy president is a danger to ourselves and to our truest, most valuable ally, Israel.
But first we must get to what’s really bothering America, still, even back to last Sunday when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.
Slapped him across the face after Chris Rock said something about Will Smith’s wife during the Oscars.
Solid right hook from the actor who played Muhammad Ali in a movie.
The New York Post devotes an entire section, article after article, for “The Slap Heard Around The World.”
Fortunately, both men are African American. If, say, Will Smith were White, there’d be riots. As it is, what we’ve got is a misunderstanding between two very rich and very successful entertainers, Will Smith the actor, Chris Rock the comedian, a contretemps that has made it to the top of every news cycle…and is still going strong.
Ukraine, sure. That’s being covered, and so are the nuke talks between Team Biden and the mullahs of Iran, in which the concessions exclusively come from us, not them, diplomacy, if that’s the word, that can spark here too a war of the worlds, only this time between us and Iran… with Israel caught in the middle.
Must I provide the details, after everybody else has already provided an opinion? Americans already know the story. Israelis are just as savvy.
The envelope, please? Well, the consensus has it that Will Smith went too far. He has finally apologized, but faces disciplinary action from the Academy.
He could be sentenced to 30 years hard labor in Siberia, or a week watching “The View.” If it were me, I’d choose Siberia.
What strikes me about all this, as always, is that in America we have the luxury to focus on so much that is mundane, frivolous and silly.
Most other nations are not so lucky; Israel facing a new round of deadly terrorist attacks, for example. This charmed life of ours too often we take for granted.
Nothing of this Will Smith/Chris Rock business is life-changing for you or for me.
But this is…
Enter Joe Biden.
After overindulging on too much cultural popcorn, I got caught up on the latest political firestorm from Fox News.
To learn that Joe Biden has been making one gaffe after another.
I say Fox News because the Big Three Networks find no imperfections, ever, in Joe Biden.
Most seriously, while in Poland, was Biden’s off-script comment: “For G-d’s sake, this man [Putin] cannot remain in power.”
This would be okay if he was talking to his wife around the dinner table after a tough day at the office.
Out loud, was this a call for regime change, from the leader of one nuclear superpower to another? Is Biden aware that such loose talk starts wars?
Is Biden aware that when he talks every word counts? No, he is not aware, when he says that he is only expressing moral outrage and a “personal” observation.
But there are no “personal observations’ when a man becomes President of the United States. Everything he says in public is taken as policy and doctrine.
A president never speaks only for himself. He speaks for the nation…and you can bet Putin took it “personal."
Putin must be counting down toward lift-off ever since Biden called him a “killer” with George Stephanopoulos on ABC-NEWS.
Obviously, this man Biden has no inkling of the power of his office, and still wakes up every morning surprised that he is president.
As are the rest of us.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhardwrites regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah.” For that and his 1960s epic “The Days of the Bitter End,” contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com
