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.