As Queen of France during the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette is alleged to have callously said, “Let them eat cake” when told that French peasants had no bread and were starving to death.

Barak Obama is, for better or worse, the President of the United States and therefore considered to be the “leader” of the free world.
These days it seems as if the whole world is coming unglued. The Middle East is erupting in unrest –Iran, Egypt, Yemen and now Libya. Who knows what Middle Eastern nation will destabilize next?

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il is still rattling his sabres at the United States, South Korea and Japan. And speaking of Japan, they’re literally swimming in dead bodies, debris and nuclear radiation as result of catastrophic earthquakes, aftershocks, resulting Tsunamis and exploding nuclear power plants.

In her keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1988, then-Texas State Treasurer Ann Richards in criticism of then-US-vice president George H.W. Bush’s leadership screeched numerous times “Where was George?” She did this to insinuate his lack of leadership in global crises (a role most vice presidents are forbidden to play, leaving the leadership up to their boss, the President of the United States. George H.W. Bush pretty well put this criticism to rest later serving quite effectively as President and commander-in-chief of the US military during the first Gulf War.)

So, in that spirit, with all the North Korean threat, civil unrest in the Middle East and the catastrophe of the Japanese earthquake and resulting Tsunamis and nuclear radiation emergencies, “Where is Barak?”

For starters, he recorded his weekly Saturday morning radio address last week as the Japan crisis was unfolding and never mentioned Japan. Further he let it air Saturday morning un-amended for developments in Japan because, well, he had a golf outing to get to. Instead, what was our president’ s commentary to the world? Not what the US is doing to address any of these worldwide crises. No, instead it was the old liberal standby – class envy – in this particular case, equal pay for women for equal work. (Didn’t we hear about that in the 1970s and fix that already?)

What has the “leader” of the free world’s workweek been like so far as the radiation has blown into the Japanese atmosphere and fallen back onto the thousands of dead bodies that they can no longer cover because of a lack of body bags? Again, he harkens back to class envy and divisiveness – an appearance and photo opportunity with the National Association for Colored People!

What has held the president’s agenda instead of these world crises? His sports interests obviously take precedent over his presence as the leader of the free world in crisis. The president managed to get in yet another golf outing and announced his March Madness picks for the NCAA Tournament late this afternoon.

In fairness, historians doubt that Marie Antoinette actually made the “let ‘em eat cake response.” But if she had, I’m sure she’d really be proud of Barak Obama who shows about the same lack of leadership and willingness to help the world as it slowly descends these past couple of weeks into madness and despair.