Midland's Own Boy George
by Ora Shay

Ed. Note: Ms. Shay, our Token Republican, agreed to write for us only with the stipulation that no editorial hands touch her words. Thus we publish this, her fourth column, exactly as it came in over our email transom.

Midland, Tex. --Isn’t he something? First the whole world was making fun of our hometown boy, and now people are talking of him in Trumanesque terms.

Trumanesque, Shrumanesque! I say "Churchillian" would be more accurate.

There was not a dry eye in Midland following The President's magnificent speech in the National Cathedral, and then when he sat down and Poppy reached over Barbara’s generous lap to squeeze his arm, you could hear buttons popping with pride all over the Permian Basin.

As my daddy used to say to my brother, "A real man don’t show what he’s got in his pants till it comes time for him to use it." (My brother later confided to me that this advice caused him some problems in junior high gym class, but we don't need to go into that here.)

I can’t imagine any better proof that God is on our side than that in this time of unprecedented crisis we should be blessed with a leader of classic stature, able to rhetoricize on an equal footing and from the same pulpit as The Rev. Billy Graham.

Just think what a pickle we’d be in if that faux Tennessee intellectual and his cute little helpmate Bipsie or Bootsie or whatever her name is were in the White House now and America’s destiny were in his hands and those of a bunch of ragtag post-Clinton hanger-ons.

But no. The Deity has again smiled on the United States of America and spared us that embarrassing and who knows possibly fatal fate.

Instead we have Midland’s own Boy George becoming a Man before our very eyes, rising from the humiliation of endless TV jokes to the pantheon of nation-saving leadership, relegating power right and left (well, OK, mostly right, praise the Lord), saving the toughest decisions for himself:

The War of Independence gave us Washington. The War Between the States gave us Lincoln. Now, the War of Afghanistan has given us yet another great George.