Dear Mr. Obama

Dear Mr. Obama,

Don’t get a Border Collie, you are not qualified to own one.

Although they are the ultimate dog and you are very ambitious, you can’t talk your way into being a good Border Collie steward, and learning on the fly is a horrible option. Nor can you gain their respect and devotion by surpassing extremely low expectations and having the media claim that the only reason you can’t be the second coming of Christ is that Barack Obama stands second to no man.

Sure, they’re a tempting choice. They are brilliant. The media thinks you are too. I have my doubts about you, but it’s true about the dogs. They’ll see right through your bullshit in lieu of experience. Rhetoric gets you nowhere with a Border Collie.

Border Collies have a long history of and proven ability to bring sheep and cattle together. People say you’ll be able to bring the sheeple together, although you have no record of doing so and no credible plan to suggest that your historical lack of delivering the goods is not predicative of your present (in)ability to fulfill your many promises.

Border Collies are flashy, handsome, and charismatic. I think you look like a sock puppet, but the veritable cult that you’ve built around you seems to disagree. And hey, you are half Black and half White just like the dogs. But the dogs’ color is to make them stand out and to show clearly what they are: working stock. Your color obfuscates the issue. You’re half Caucasoid half Negroid, but your color doesn’t correctly mark you as working stock.

Although the Border Collie has no historical traction with the Black community — which seems to prefer edgier dogs like pit bulls, dobermans and German shepherds — you might be attracted to the similarities in how most Blacks and Border Collies originally came to America. Both were primarily brought to this country to advance agribusiness through the use of cost cutting techniques: namely slavery and indentured servitude and the labor saving efficiency of replacing dozens of human drovers with a farm dog or two.

Most Americans who look like you have a pedigree centuries deep with working stock. But you do not share this history. Your ancestors were never slaves, and your Blackness has no roots in America, the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War or any aspect of the slave side of slavery. If anything, your pedigree has more slave owners in it than slaves.

Making you President doesn’t heal any wounds unless the mere appearance of slave descendancy is good enough to do so. The truth is that you don’t share the heritage or the culture of the aggrieved parties, the similarities are only skin deep. And Border Collie folks will tell you that looking like a Border Collie isn’t good enough. English Shepherds look like Border Collies, but you don’t see them topping the smartest dogs lists, winning herding trials, or obliterating the competition in dog sports.

The Border Collie purists call dogs that share the breed’s working heritage but have not maintained the working culture “Barbie Collies.” In relation to the centuries of race relations in this country, you are a “Barbie Black.” Not only do you not share to any great degree any of the Black American culture that has been distinct from African culture for as long as this country has been a country, your connection to Black heritage is centuries out of alignment as well. At least “Barbie Collies” have working dogs in their pedigree. Your pedigree circumvents the entire Black American experience.

The ironic thing is, you’re one of the few African-Americans who can actually claim to be both African and American with enough separation to require a hyphen. Perhaps that’s the confusion. If American Blacks are trying to find identity not in the last 400 years of their history on this continent, but instead gloss over that period and re-embrace Africa, you are an appealing choice as your culture and heritage do just that.

But you can’t gloss over the history of the Border Collie. Their fate is in their blood and more than any other breed their purpose driven breeding is as relevant and potent today as it ever was.

You also lack the two fundamental prerequisites that every Border Collie needs: time and space. Dogs don’t train themselves and for their brilliance, Border Collies need early and ongoing training to keep them happy and healthy. This isn’t something you can pawn off to an underling or a trainer; if you do, the dog will bond with them and not you, and it will be your dog in name only. Border Collies are one-owner dogs and your empty resume on pet ownership suggests that you’re probably unprepared for a low maintenance pet, let alone a high maintenance one like a Border Collie.

You also lack the space. These dogs need to move, to run, to explore. Staying cooped up in the White House residence is not an optimal situation (just look what it’s done to Barney’s temperament), and despite your crooked dealings with Rezko getting you a little bit bigger back yard in Chicago, it’s still not enough to house a Border Collie, especially when you’ll be busy walking on water and trashing the country with welfare to unions and class warfare.

You might be tempted with the expansive White House Lawn. And it’s true that your mentor Woodrow Wilson (the misogynist KKK-loving dipshit who gave us progressive taxation, the Federal Reserve, and who lusted after one world government with the League of Nations) kept a herd of sheep on the lawn to cut costs when his failed foreign and economic policies put the gardeners out of work or dead in trenches in Europe.

You’ve never worked a laborious day in your life and you don’t appear to be an outdoors man in any sense of the term. Do you even own a pair of boots or tennis shoes? Have you mowed a lawn? Do you hike? Can you pitch a tent or start a fire? Have you ever even been to a ranch or a farm? Ridden a horse? Driven in a Jeep?

I don’t think a single term is going to be long enough for all of the on-the-job training you’re going to need to run the country, and on-the-job dog ownership training, especially with an expert level dog like the Border Collie would just be too much, even for the Messiah.

Wilson was a “cold fish” boring homebody and it seems like you are too. Wilson was wise enough to not own a dog during his years in the White House, and I suggest you take his lead. The first of many broken campaign promises should be the one to your kids on getting them a dog. If you do ke
ep that promise, make sure it isn’t a Border Collie.

You’re already going to fuck my country up, leave my breed alone please. The word “Babe” still echoes in the Border Collie world with sighs for all the idiots who wanted one just like the movie. I’m hoping to forget you ever existed in four years, so it will be a real pain in my ass if the word “Obama” lingers on in perpetuity by all the poorly bred puppy mill Border Collies that are sure to materialize if the Obamaton legion follows your gospel of dog.

Lesser bloggers are just dying for you to pick their breed. Make them happy, and don’t get a Border Collie.