This past summer I took my 12-year-old daughter to England. We feasted our eyes on the typical first-time-visitor attractions: Big Ben, Tower of London, Stonehenge, Windsor Castle, blah, blah, blah. The one thing that left an indelible impression on my mind, however, is something quite mundane: Muslim women cloaked from head-to-toe in black sheets a la Halloween ghost.

On the streets of London, Muslim men, as their wives follow a step or two behind, brush past women wearing miniskirts (a trend that started in England, I learned) and tank tops. I wondered, aren’t these men afraid that their wives might be infected, through those little eye-hole slits, by Western infidels and their corrupt culture?

When I told my husband the outrage I felt for these women, he said that it was a part of their religion and culture, and for me not to be bothered by it. Come again? So religion and culture are excuses for polygamy? What about clitoridectomy? And while we’re at it, why not bring back feet binding and human sacrifice?

If these women enjoy going out in public wearing black sheets (abayat, or whatver), then yes, knock themselves out–as long as it is truly their choice. I’m willing to put serious money down that they wouldn’t mind wearing less cumbersome garb every once in a while, perhaps when it’s 90 degrees out?

Here’s a thought: ”when in Rome do as the Romans do.” Why immigrate to the West, then desperately cling to everything from home? Wouldn’t it be better to just stay at home where “strange” traditions are the norm? Most treacherous of all are those who not only cling to their own ways, denounce the ways of their new home, and force those in their host country to adapt to them instead of the other way around.

When you come to my house, and you see that I’m not wearing any shoes (for me, not as much cultural as it is anal–shoes track in dirt), that would be a pretty good indicator that you should take your shoes off, too.

Embedded in almost every article, most vexing the critical ones, is the inevitable sentence or two in which the author makes the painstaking effort to extol the irresistible charm, the immense likeability, the keen intelligence, the awesome…je ne se quoi…awesomeness? of Barack Hussein Obama. On what are all of these hyperbolisms based? His legislative record? Voting “present” is brilliant. His educational credentials? Spotless because no transcript has ever been tainted by prying human eyes. His sense of humor? Self-deprecating as long as no one mentions his ears or uses his middle name.

His wolfish toothy grin and his contrived folksy colloquialisms, combined with his snake-oil-salesman soaring rhetoric and his beauty-queen lofty idealism, managed to snooker enchant quite a few Americans last year. I remember watching helplessly as those around me were aswirl in a maelstrom of hope and change. There was only a handful of people to whom I could safely express my sense of despair at the disturbing and frightening prospect of a man named Barack Hussein Obama occupying the White House.

Some thirty summers ago on a visit to my father in Taiwan, he took me along to a meeting with a “friend.” The negative vibes I got the moment I set eyes on this man are as palpable today as they had been then. After we left, I told my father that I didn’t like this person. His response was “dong ma bu dong”–a mild insult meaning “know nothing.” It wouldn’t be but a few years later that this “friend” would swindle from my father his life’s savings a la Bernie Madoff and leave my father a broken man.

Shocker, I know, but yes, I did get the exact same vibes the very first time I saw Barack Obama on TV in the middle of a mind-numbing stirring speech. Troubling facts would emerge as the campaign wore on–Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, et cetera–but so powerful was the collective goodwill toward this man that nothing was capable of tarnishing his suit of armor. Even my own husband was telling me to “cool it” on my nonstop diatribe and to give the man a chance.

Now, many months into his crowning, the prevailing rule of thumb in the MSM is that one may bemoan the state of disrepair into which the country/world has fallen (Georgie-did-it-Georgie-did-it-Georgie-did-it) but in no way is anyone even to think about besmirching the man, Barack Hussein Obama, because that would be, well, racist.

I have only one thing to say. I don’t like him.