[…]
JERUSALEM!
The arrival of the seven-mile-long motorcade was preceded by the descent on the scene of hundreds of Israeli local police and even more Israeli Defense Forces regulars, bristling with every weapon imaginable, from long sabers to bazookas and shoulder-mounted mortars. Colorful tourists and sombre religious Hasidim were all shooed out of the way of the presidential hopeful, as he exited his black SUV with the Utah license plate bearing the inscription BAIN SAVES. The mob of police and soldiers thronged in front of the SUV doors, and Mr. Romney came out and was instantly surrounded by his body guards, forming circles ten-deep around the candidate, all facing out with their weapons at the ready, like a queen bee swarming her way to a new nest. The pulsating circle with the presidential supplicant at the center moved toward the wall. Nearing it, Mr. Romney disengaged from the swarm purposefully and solemnly, stopped a few inches away from it, and stared mutely at a blank area of the wall, while the crowd outside the swarm started to wail in prayer. He stood this way for nearly twenty minutes, searching quizzically, while shifting his weight from one leg to another. The pace of this shifting increased until it became clear that all this shuffling could only mean one thing. Mr. Romney was ready to go. At which point, he suddenly reached into his jacket pocket, as though he had just remembered something, startling all six hundred of his bodyguards and protectors, who thought he was about to pull a gun. He pulled out a large piece of paper instead on which he checked off a couple of things, folded up the paper into a tiny morsel, and searched for a spot in the wall where he might put it. He found a hole in the wall several feet above his head, but couldn’t reach it. Ever helpful, the men and women of the IDF picked him up and hoisted him on their shoulders, their faces photoshopped beyond recognition in the newsreel footage, so that the facial recognition software could not link them to their FaceBook pages and create all sorts of humorous mishigass. He was able to reach the opening and tuck his piece of paper into it, but he lost his balance, and like a man in a circus act, fell backward into the crowd of his armed handlers. The crowds gasped. But his valiant protectors below saved his life, dusted him off, and proceeded to escort him back to his SUV.
The motorcade then wound its way downtown to the King David Hotel, where a reception in Romney’s honor organized by Bibi Netanyahu was about to get under way. Once inside the hotel’s reception hall, Mitt Romney, now sporting an “I Voted Today” sticker on his lapel, worked the tables filled with the cream of Israeli society, as well as visiting foreign dignitaries, bankers, diplomats, and all manner of Hollywood royalty. Clearly, Barack Obama is in deep trouble.
Netanyahu welcomed Romney to the dais and introduced him to the cheering throng. Bibi yielded the lectern to Mitt. Romney thanked his host and the audience for their welcome, and proceeded to tell them about the importance of Israel to American politics. He finished with this precious remark in praise of his hosts, “Jewish culture is part of what has allowed them to be more successful financially than their Palestinian neighbors,” revealing that he not only came for their votes, but for their money. Move the letters around and you get “R-MONEY.”
And so it goes in this most charmless of political seasons.
