Interview with Obama

This is an interview, not a story, that's why it's here.


Interview with Obama
by
Steven Hunley

Nobody knows about me and Obama. But with everybody else getting all the press out there I figure it’s time to leak a few secrets. The real goods, the genuine article.

The article I was writing about my interview with Obama. Some big cheeze wouldn't let it out, said it was too controversial. But I have the flash drive right here with the recordings. Made a duplicate before the CIA burned the original with a laser down in wherever is they do it. Phoenix? No, not Phoenix? Tuscaloosa? No, not Tuscaloosa. Where ever it is. Oh yeah, Langley.

Can’t say how it was all arranged. It’s still not declassified. But I can tell you this:

I needed an article and he needed to talk. We didn’t give a hoot about the cameras and tape recorders in the oval office.

Did I tell you about the time I want to Paramount Studios?

Saw Henry Fonda and Carl Malden dress up as 50’s dudes in the oval office, a set. They were sitting on stools in a corner. They looked funny in suits sitting in corners on stools, like they were errant school boys who needed a fools cap. The filament of one of the dozens of overhead lights was tinkling like an irregular turn-signal in your car.

The sound man was picking it up on the overhead boom. It was driving him nuts. So now they had two electrical technicians up on stepladders screwing and unscrewing bulbs.

People have no idea how hot it gets on sets. You’re wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a tie, and a suit! You’re the goddam President for Christ’s sakes! You’re sweaty. Mauldin and Fonda were sweaty in their suits, so were the guys on the ladders, whose faces were much nearer the lights.
It was going to take some time, more than they figured. Such stuff overrun budgets are made of, the nation has the same problems.

Forgive me if I digress. I’m a little nervous, I’m a little upset, and as usual, don’t know what I’m doing.

So we’re sitting in the oval office. He looks smaller than on TV, skinnier too. So do I probably, but I’m never on TV.

“Want coffee?” he says to me, with a gracious smile.

“You got coffee?”

“Oh, yes, we can get lots of coffee, what kind you want?”

“Columbian Supremo.”

“Can get. You know, we shouldn’t be trading with these guys. The cartels are nothing but cheap cocaine mills, but the coffee is always top drawer.”

You know, the guy was as gracious as an ambassador. He had skills. I was impressed. Skinny with skills. Kinda reminded me of myself.

“Mind if I turn on the digital recorder?”

“As Long John Silver once said in Treasure Island, “Let her rip.”

Oh, OMG, we both liked Stevenson too! Oh Jeez, it was getting better and better. If I found out he liked Led Zeppelin it would be a match made in heaven.

So now we’re doing the coffee thing. The manly coffee thing mind you,

"Not with the dainty cups we sip from when Michelle is around. None of that Royal Dolton, sticking your little finger up in the air stuff."

No, real manly coffee mug drinking. Serious stimulant intake and all that. The mugs all had United States flags on them.

“Hey, Prez, you know what?" He let me call him Prez after the first mug. “I named my daughter Michelle too.”

“Yes,” he said, and put his feet up on a hassock. He looked peaceful and relaxed, and wore a tender smile on his face. I knew he was thinking about her. She was the only calming force in his life.

"Michelle is my lifejacket on the U.S.S. Ship of State. If it sinks, she's my saving grace."

“I named my daughter Michelle after the Beatles song came out," I replied, "Because the French have such a well-developed sense of beauty. You’ve been there, you’ve seen the museums.”

“I find it the most romantic name in the world,” he admitted, and looked content.

The ice, as they say, was broken.



©Steven Hunley 2013

http://youtu.be/uj_FB7esygQ Michelle The Beatles



For security reasons the rest of the interview will not be posted until declassified. Probably next week!

Lol. Can't wait for the rest!

It's refreshing to imagine Obama kicking back, with his feet up, talking like one of the guys. I am looking forward to the declassification!

There was a photo published of Kevin Rudd on the phone to Obama in the paper last week laid back and dressed casually so someone wrote in to say how disrespectful our PM was to the President! Apparently you should wear your best suit when you call the guy...(I wonder what Obama was wearing)

“So tell me, Mister Prezz, did you always want to be president? I mean, since you were a little boy?”

He put his index finger on his forehead and his thumb on his jaw. He was rearranging the answer in his mind.

“Naw, not when I was little. Whatever I said to the other newspaper men, or interviewers has not been the whole truth, since back when I was really young, I never considered being president, I wanted to be someone else, someone closer to home.”

“Like?”

“Like the Lone Ranger.”

“Well I can see that, always wanted to be a cowboy myself.”

“We’re westerners, it’s bred into us. We all want to be cowboys or movie stars. Look at Reagan."


“And it’s not like you didn’t make it as the Lone Ranger. Unknown, untested, dark-horse, dude outa nowhere, becomes president, helps the ordinary and unfortunate, takes the bull by the horns. Rights the wrongs and worries the wicked while riding the north forty of Washington DC. The only thing you’re lacking is the gun, the horse, and the cowboy hat.”

“And Tonto.”

“And Tonto.”

“Michelle is Tonto.”

“Tonto?”

“You know, the character that every viewer forgets, stays on the side lines and all. When they go to the commercial, and in the meantime the Lone Ranger gets caught by the bad guys, that’s Congress, and they’re about to take off his mask and reveal his identity, but then outa nowhere Michelle steps in and saves the day. I get to wear my president mask another episode or two.”

“Prezz, yes, so eloquently put! They say behind every successful man is a woman.”

“Napoleon had Josephine, Caesar had Cleopatra, and so forth.”

“But, Prezz, you know what Tonto means in Spanish, don’t ya?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It means fool.”

He sat up straight. “Really? Then we don’t tell Michelle about the Tonto bit. That part stays classified until hell freezes over. She might get offended.”

“I’m with you on that one, Prezz, my lips are sealed.”

He grew relaxed again and smiled. “There’s one thing I do know for sure. I’m a Tonto for her love.”

“Sure you are, Prezz,” I sputtered, and wiped my mouth on a napkin embroidered with the great seal. “You may be a great politician, but don’t give up your day job to be a stand-up comedian.”

The clock on the mantel struck three and I had only an hour to go. It was time to push the serious button.

“What irritates you most about the presidency?”

“Now that’s gonna take a bit of thought. There’s so many to choose from. Let’s see….” and his face went contemplative for a moment.

A secret service man in an Armani suit went by one of the French windows and never looked in. The clock on the mantel, the one Martha gave George on his birthday, ticked and tocked a few more times. Outside a tourist from Tulsa snapped a picture of the lawn.

“You know what it is? It’s the gap between me and the people I serve. That isn’t the senators and congressmen, the retired generals sitting in the boardrooms of arms manufactures, blowing their noses on hundred dollar bills I worry about. It’s everyday people that have no voice, the vast majority. The press gave them the idea I let them down, because I didn’t bring all the changes they needed.

Here I was, the Lone Ranger, a single rider, a simple hombre trying to turn a stampeding economy away from a cliff. Like I had the power of Super Black Man and an asbestos cape to take the heat from Congress.

That, and the fact the notoriety is driving me crazy, I can’t do anything, my family can’t do anything before it’s “trending”. What tie I wear, what dress Michelle has on, what breed dog we have. Like our personal choices are meant to set fashions. I can never do anything by myself. It’s disgusting.”

“You don’t care for the paparazzi?”

“Don’t tell Mr. and Mrs. America, but I don’t care for pizza either. Tomato sauce gives me heartburn. I mean I can’t take a walk with Secret Service men always at my side. Can’t write a speech without running it past my writing team for ‘political correctness’. Being president has cost me the common touch. And talking about cost reminds me of this financial ‘slump’ as the spin masters like to call it here in D.C. It makes me so depressed it looks like a depression to me.”

“Me too, from what my parents told me.”

“Yeah, it stinks, me, Mister Big Man, Mister In Charge, letting the bad guys win and run the rest of us lemmings over the cliff, and if the CEOs can make a profit doing it, then it’s full speed ahead. I just don’t know how to break through the barriers! I’ve lost my perspective. Sometimes politicians play dirty ball, not all of them, but enough to spoil the game for everybody.

They live in gated communities, on estates, have plenty of money. They lost the touch too. Some of them lost it generations ago. Old money. I mean, if you were the Prezz, what would you do?”

Now, it wasn’t every day the Press was apt to ask me for advice. So I gave it a real hard and serious think.

“Well, I got an idea how you can get back in touch, and it won’t cost you and arm and a leg.”





©Steven Hunley 2013

to be continued as the secret documents are de-classified....

It's developing nicely, I can't wait to see your plan.

Imaginative, Steve, but the speaker/interviewer/narrator sounds a teensy bit paranoid. (Maybe that's intentional.) In any event, check your spelling "Cheese" (as in Big Cheese) and I believe Mr. Malden spelled his first name with a "K."

story continued...

"Prezz, you remember how back during the Great Depression, Roosevelt gave those fireside chats?”

“Of course, everybody knows about that. Reagan did them too. You must know I did them. But they weren’t as effective….” he trailed off.

“Not as effective as back then? Not as effective as you wanted?”

“Yeah,” Mr. President got up and walked across the oval office and stopped in front of his presidential oak desk. As tough as the work was, as tough as the decisions were, it should have been iron wood. He hopped up and dangled his legs over the edge like a five-year old. He may have been Mister President but he still maintained a proper degree of boyish charm.

“Yeah,”he said, and sighed like a kid who just broke his kite string.

“That’s because you’re too insulated. Too many middle men between you and your countrymen. You got security, your people got no security. You got speech writers, they fumble with words. If they trust you, they don’t trust the men in between. They like to think you’re pure, unaffected, and not in some rich-man’s pocket, unlike in the Senate or Congress where lobbyists pray on the members like locusts on corn.”

“I tried to do the chats…”

“But Roosevelt’s were different. They were live. And that’s what you have to do, go live, and eliminate the middle-men. The public understands they’re all just high-paid Harvard ad men anyway, and the product they’re selling is you.”

“How could I go live?”

“You go freestyle. You’re all over the place when you travel. Every city, every town, every burg you hit has a radio or TV station. You’ve got the fricken bully pulpit! You just let ‘em know you’d like to cop some air time.”

“That’s right, I am! Bully for me!”

I could see the prezz was smiling, his pearly-whites were showing, just like Teddy Roosevelt.

“You give the facility a call on your cell phone, tell the secret service to jettison the agenda, and make the next left or right, or whatever, roll up in your limo. You got a black limo, don’t cha?"

“Of course, I have a few.”

“Don’t get offended Prezz, but I’ve never seen you roll down my street, we don’t have enough rose petals or red carpets. But you roll up and ask for a few minutes of time. What radio or TV station is going to turn you down? People call in with questions, you answer. You tell ‘em what you know. You tell ‘em how you feel. It don’t matter what the question is, or the size or importance. They, the people, The People, like it says in the Declaration, get to know you, and talk to you. You become one of them again, like before you went public service and all.”

The Prezz scooted off the desk and circled it twice. It was his version of pacing in the oval office. Big decisions often require pacing. You ought to see Churchill’s carpet at 10 Downing.

He stopped for a second and gave me one of his world-famous piercing looks. Michelle called it “the dagger’, said it went straight to her heart. In her case it was dipped in love. In my case it was drenched in awe.

“It will work. We’ll make it work. Michelle will love it. You’re too much! You fracture me!”

“Aw, shucks, Prezz,” I said in my best John Wayne imitation, as I looked at the floor and dragged my foot in a lazy figure eight. “Twernt nothin’.”


conclusion to follow.

Simply excellent.

Excellent BS, Hunley. As usual. Obama has speech writers? LOL You capable of imitating John Wayne? ROFLMAO

Then it was time to vamoose, and we agreed to continue the interview a few days later, politics permitting. The days turned into weeks, and I’d call up and get his secretary every time.

“President Obama? I think he’s here, hold on.”

And I’d hold on and hold on and hold on. Like how long you hold on if you were suspended from a rope dangling from the deck of the Titanic over the icy north Atlantic. Like the way men, especially Canadian loggers, hold on to their favorite red flannel shirts. Like the way I hold on to that stupid brick I stole from the Coliseum in seventy-two because it was a manifestation of Vespasian’s dream and the glory that once was Rome. This kept on for a week.

I realized after a while I was getting the run-around. So for a change I called late a few days later. On comes a delightfully feminine voice and it’s not the one I recognize that belongs to the shriveled-up secretary.

“Yes?”

Funny with some voices you get lots of meanings and impressions when other people use thousands of words and strain to get their message across.

“I need to talk to the Prezz.”

“Prezz? Is that Prezz you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Steve Hunley, is this you?”

“Elle, is that you?”

“Yes!”

“I’m so glad it’s you. We’ve never met but your favorite Prezz told me about you.”

“He told me about you too.”

“Is he there? Can we talk?”

“I’ll get him right away; he had a hard day with the health-care and all, he’s scarfing down a humongous bowl of Kraft macaroni and cheese. You know, comfort food.”

“Well, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Think nothing of it. By the way, I read all your stuff I can get my hands on. You have quite an imagination!”

“Thanks, it’s been a curse.”

She laughed gaily, with effervescent sparkle, and put down the phone.

“Steve?”

“That’s me, Prezz, I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days.”

“I know. I know all about it. Somehow someone is messing with my communications. I took your advice about the chats. My popularity poles skyrocketed. Somehow the big wigs at the capital got suspicious. They started digging, started tapping my communications. But on this phone I change the codes myself, of course in a few days they’ll be able to decipher it too. But right now it’s safe.”

“Wow, this is serious!”

“Serious as a heart-attack my friend. With your advice I changed the role of president, and revolutionized the relationship between me and the public and the administration. There are many many middle-men whose vested interests were threatened. We rocked the boat!”

“I guess we did.”

“Now listen closely. You’re deemed dangerous. They want to identify you. They want to take and put you God only knows where because I sure don’t. I mean, I got spies and they’ve got spies and all of Washington is full of spymen and women, it’s a political cut-throat island here in D.C.”

“All God’s Chillins Got Spies?”

“Yes. So, talking about chillin, you and I have to chill.”

“Until the heat blows over.”

“Until then. Steve, I gotta tell ya. Some men will do anything to protect their interests. They’d sell their grandma’s false teeth to protect the status quo.”

“Their pocketbooks, I get ya."

“But you can only publish what I say is O.K. Alright? Some place small, some obscure site.”

“How about Lit Net?”

“Oh yes, Lit Net! I love their stuff. Michelle reads it all the time!”

Then for a second I could hear his voice and it wasn’t directed at the phone, but he said,

“Did ya hear that, Honey, I’m giving the official OK to Lit Net. Wadda you think?”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! The readers and writers are so erudite and imaginative! Tell them Michelle said hello!”

“Steve, Elle says…”

“I heard Elle, Prezz, and tell her “can do.”

“So we got a deal? No calls ‘till the coast is clear? It's for your own safety."

“Prezz, to paraphrase the Go Go’s, My Lips are Sealed.”

“You talk just like you write, with the music references and all. You’re a regular laugh riot.”


“Thanks, it’s a gift.”

Now I haven’t heard anything lately, but if I get a call, or a bald eagle swoops down out of the sky with a message taped to his leg I’ll let you all know.

©Steven Hunley 2013


http://youtu.be/1EOu8CAX8Yw Our Lips are Sealed Go Go’s

Offering an Oldie but Goodie. That's all I can say.

One of my favorites. Good times these were!

This is good. Where are these people? Mooing around Facebook, like stunned animals.