The Boy King

I didn't have to listen to all of it to know what he would say. The Boy King, in deference to himself, knew where to put the blame. You could see that he clearly believed that "it" was not his fault. "It" is our economic depression. We are losing our home, my husband and I work 60-80 hours a week, seeing our children for two very tired hours each night, yet, we're barely making ends meet. Without my second job and a business we've spent 15 years to build, which, once dug out, is now dug back in, we'd be sunk. But he was concerned whether America would blame him, you could hear it in the unspoken words.
You could hear it in the cadence of his voice: each sentence began with a tone of conviction and then the words blurred together toward the end as if to force them into an attempt at believability. Or maybe he thought it sounded intellectual to speak more quickly at the end of a sentence than at the beginning, like William F. Buckley, only without the elite vocabulary. He was nervous. The once glorious messiah of the down-trodden and the one who would deliver them from the evils of the Great Satan, with the roar of the cheering crowds in his ears, was nervous. He lashed out like my child lashes out at me when she knows she has committed an offense. “I’m right!” she screams at the top of her lungs; but I know better, because, well, I’m an adult.
He was speaking to adults, but talking to himself. He was angry, lecturing, as if the adults weren’t paying attention. The people are turning away and the child king is stomping his foot, “You not doing it right! Why won’t you listen to me?” We’re all trying to survive and we’re watching our king and his minions fly on jets to stay in hotels that cost $2,200 a night in order, they say, to save us from ourselves and our polluting ways: we’re done listening now. The king is no longer as important as he once was; the grownups have woken up and now see that he isn’t what he said he was: wise, seasoned, and centered. He was just what he was when all the adoration and joyous praise began; he is still just a boy.