Now, look.
I'm an amazing, amazing rock star of a man. But even I have my heroes. Yes, there are people out there who I look up to, people in whose footsteps I long to walk. For example, take Ashlee Simpson.
Now Ashlee knows exactly what I'm going through. She's the little sister of pop star Jessica Simpson. Ashlee doesn't have any singing ability. She can't dance. She's tone deaf. She's completely ill-equipped to be a pop star. And yet, she wanted nothing more than to out-do her famous sister. Of course, if you watch E! as much as I do, you know that this came around to bite Ashlee on her oddly bony tush... While performing on Saturday Night Live, Ashlee's lip sync track started playing at the wrong time, revealing to the country that even her mediocre radio hits have been so tweaked in post-production that they no longer resemble anything that might actually come out of her mouth.
The same thing sort of happened to me. Like Ashlee, I badly, badly wanted to win an important contest, but instead of wanting to outdo an accomplished sibling, I wanted to beat out an incredibly qualified and experienced opponent and land the most important job in the land. Now, realize I didn't really want to do the job (remember, I'm laughably ill-prepared); I just wanted to win! I did win and, like Ashlee, have found myself in over my head. I've been so nervous about all this that I've mostly just been hiding from the public lately.
But then, the other day, I was at a deli getting some lunch, absorbing the praise of my mindless minions, when a bunch of reporters showed up and wanted me to actually talk about what I'm going to do as president. When I first saw them with their mics and me without my teleprompter, I froze for a moment. But then I thought: What Would Ashlee Do?
When Ashlee Simpson was exposed as being unqualified and ill-equipped and found herself in way over her head, she did a jig that resembled a retarded leprechaun, then wandered off stage. How could anyone recover from that? No problem...not for Ashlee. She reappeared at the very end of the show as the cast was saying goodbye and whined, "I'm soooo sorry. My band started playing the wrong song and I didn't know what to do. So I thought I'd do a hoedown." OMG! Brilliant! She thought she'd do a hoedown! I've already mastered the whole blaming everybody else thing, but saying something stupid to detract from my own ineptitude? This I had to try.
I turned and looked at the expectant reporters. "I got the corned beef," I said. A couple of them tried to laugh as if I had said something funny. But then one of them had the hopeful audacity to ask me about some auto industry crisis or something and what I planned to do about it. I mean come on! Don't they know that the press is only supposed to lob me softballs like, "What kind of dog are you getting?" and, "Why are you so fabulous?" Luckily, I was thinking quick on my feet. "We got the corned beef," I repeated, and returned to greeting my fans. Whew! That was a close one!
But the near-misses weren't over. Returning to the counter to get my order, I accidentally told the clerk, "Rahm Emmanuel sends his regards." Crud, I thought. I'm going to bring attention to the fact that I ran as the ultimate agent of change and promised all this fresh blood, only to almost completely replicate the tired old Clinton war room crowd with all their politics-as-usual-dirty-tricks. Having already uttered Emmanuel's name, I tried to subtly bring the conversation back into neutral territory. "Yeah, I, um, ordered his corned beef," I said.
Not a bad day for me. In fact, my corned beef line was such a hit, the press even reported on it.
Yeah, I'm pretty good at all this public relations stuff. I think I'm gonna be ooookay.
Ashlee Simpson, eat your heart out.
I had the corned beef,
President B.O.
