An actor once told me that a critic has no right to review a play or a film unless the critic has been involved in the rehearsal and other pre-production processes.

I considered the observation a high-water mark in dimness until yesterday, when I heard M. Obama's answer to a reporter's question about why her husband's performance as president was receiving such bad reviews from the left. (BO had previously neutralized criticism from the right with his famous "guns and religion" aside.)

"They don't know, you know," was the crux of MO's reply. (MO relies on the oral vice, "you know," the way BO relies on a teleprompter.) She dug a little deeper by saying that the left was "confused," but after catching sight of the PR squad spinning itself into a stupor off camera, rephrased by saying that "some" were confused. In other words, if the unwashed population only knew and/or understood how hard hubbie was trying, it would not be so rough on him.

Of course, Ms. Obama is completely correct. Her husband is a master of keeping his light under a bushel, or is it barrel? He's maniacally modest, has to be dragged kicking and screaming before TV cameras, and chronically underestimates his accomplishments. After all, he never compared them to those of George Washington. And whose idea was it anyway to go public (with a televised presser of course) with the babbiest of baby steps in the direction of bureaucratic simplification? No, if the public only knew and if his TV coverage were not so niggardly.

What amazes me is how this obviously elitist couple can pose as populists. I suppose it's the same legerdemain that allows Obama to put the campaign bite on the same people he excoriates for not paying their fair share of taxes. There's a one-word answer: power. The Obama's will break any pledge, bend or break any truth, and ignore any consideration of ethics to gain or retain it.

Let's hope that while wandering through their unawareness and lack of intellectual clarity, the public will experience a lucid interval long enough to appreciate how seriously it's being condescended to by the Obamas and their collectivist cohorts.