6/16/12—Email from Lewinsky. Says she misses the spotlight, wants to get acquainted. Think I’ll pass. Bill’s taste ain’t mine, and she is fifteen years older. This photo can’t be recent. Nice negligee though. Michelle got similar, but when it’s your wife, well, you know how it is. I’ll be gentle to Monica, but she can’t hold a chubby tallow to these new interns. Self control, Barack, self control, until you’re out of office. Sometimes I wish I was the President of France or Italy.
6/17/12—Low blow from CBS, me playing my 100th round of golf. They can’t even wait until after the election to bomb Syria, then Iran. Next they’ll dig up my coke habit from back in the days.
6/18/12—Monica was a plant! Oh, wait, all of these curvalicious interns are plants. That Sharee is something else, for sure. As a CIA man, I should know better.
6/19/12—Skipped links today. Got out my bong instead. Michelle and I just stayed home and chilled. Malia wanted her first hit, but I gently counseled, “Wait till you’re sixteen.” A dad must be firm. Weed delivered by CIA chopper parked out back.
6/20/12—After all I’ve done for them, I can’t believe they’ve given Issa the green light to snap at my ass. Goldman will turn on your bugzapping rear end too, in time. I’d dump Holder, but that wouldn’t play well with my so-called black base, would it? To shore up that front, maybe I should release another video of me shooting hoops? If I had Jeremy Lin guarding me, then we’d get the Chinatown votes also. Got to make sure I don’t score in Jeremy’s face, since that would backfire, but the Bible-thumping chump shouldn’t make me look bad either. Oh God, this job is so damn nuanced. Who said public relations were easy?
6/21/12—Had an unusual dream last night: The latest crop of drones has artificial intelligence, so they can decide for themselves who the enemy is, and whether to kill or just maim him. They can also torture their target, by firing at his fingers or toes, one by one, or an eye, or a nose at an angle, so only the schnozzle is knocked off, without the bullet entering the brain. Genitals can be shredded, but slowly, to maximize pain. All is well, until these drones enjoy killing so much, they’d shoot at someone just for fun, or out of boredom, like a soldier might. By now, drones have well-developed personalities, with the more immoral and ruthless rising up the hierarchy. The nastiest, a drone that can kill thousands at a time while schmoozing, charming and joking, is declared the President of the United States of America, except that the country he leads, so to speak, is just a smoldering ruins after so many decades of war and misrule. People, real people, weep tears of joy as the drone gives his inaugural speech, and intellectuals rush to be the first to compare this sophisticated airborne weapon to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR or Kennedy. Even in dream, I’m annoyed to not be mentioned as an illustrious precursor to this drone.
6/22/12—Lugo out. Very smooth. With Zelaya gone too, now we go after Mujica, Morales, Correa and, of course, Chavez again. Sounds like the ranking of the WBC flyweight division. They’ll all be swatted and squashed, green and red slime flying, their left wings shattered. Correa has some balls offering asylum to that pale pest, Assange. Do that and we’ll send you into asylum, Rafael. It’s amazing how I can remember these names, because when I meet them, they all look the same. It’s hard to tell one fly from another. Double dipping into the honey pot, those lickaliscious treats were your last meal, Julian. Goddamn, sometimes I wish I was a dissident whistleblower. Maybe I can ask Patreaus to send Sofia and Anna over. For that kind of bottom-up economics, I’ll give up my second term. Got to practice what you preach sometimes. High-volume import and export for the lower half.
6/23/12—It’d be a damn shame if they bumped me before I could flex my muscles. I wouldn’t want to be on the sideline as that twerp Romney become a caesar on laws that I signed, as in the kill list, for example. I mean, that’s my hit list, and I’m not done murdering yet. In fact, I’m just getting started. Neither libtards nor neocons have given me credit for all the lives I’ve wiped out. They think I’m backpedaling, that I’m soft, but I’ll show them how really hard I am. Hard, hard, hard! I’m Barack Obama and I’m depleted-uranium hard! I can only hope they’ll rig the election in my favor come November. I’d be genuinely sad to abandon these digs.
6/24/12—I can’t believe I wrote “genuinely” in yesterday’s entry. It was late, and I did have one too many Americanos, but me genuine? I’m losing it. A pitfall of this job is that you’re forced to be a cornball pretty much all the time, since your audience, live or televised, always expects to be slobbered with corn syrup. That and cheese, or something like cheese. If this is indeed my last act, then what kind of legacy will I have? When I got crowned, an idiot even wrote, “Obama is our Lincoln.” So many fools wept tears of joy, but now some are saying I’m even worse than Bush, heretofore thought impossible. Despite these groans of disappointment, I have not failed but achieved an enormous amount for my true constituencies. Sure, I’ve disappointed the gullible and listless morons, including most leading intellectuals, but that was precisely my job. Had I wanted to do anything for the pathetically disorganized and incoherent 99%, I’d not be allowed to occupy this office. So sorry, but not really, to all those stock boys, cashiers, parking lot attendants, dishwashers, garbagemen, custodians, bellhops and sandwich artists who sent me $25 checks, or have a T-shirt, button, calendar or coffee mug with my face on it. Suckers deserve no sympathy. So now, as we enter another round of this tiresome farce, Romney is the devil reincarnated, or no, it’s actually me! No, it’s Romney! No, it’s Obama! No!
Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.