Obama Has Suits Altered To Allow More Shrugging At Arab Antisemitism, Terrorism

Washington, DC, October 25 – US President Barack Obama has engaged a tailor to make changes to his jackets and shirts that will enable him to shrug more frequently and emphatically when he is informed of Arab attacks on Jews or continuing Jew-hatred in the Arab world.

Though in office nearly six years, the president has only more recently had occasion to shrug at the murder of Jews with any frequency. Arab antisemitism, on the other hand, is an everyday occurrence, and the classic styling of Mr. Obama’s clothes has forced him to keep his shrugging at Jewish misfortune to a minimum, or to delegate the gesture to senior aides or his Secretary of State.

The president told reporters that Secretary Kerry has been doing a “helluva job” expressing the necessary apathy at the dangers facing Israel and Jews, but that properly, the shrugging should be performed by the chief executive himself.

“Mr. Kerry has done an admirable job – a helluva pinpoint operation, actually, seizing on exactly the right attacks on Jews to ignore or downplay while accepting the false Palestinian narrative of victimhood in a single sentence,” said Obama. “But now that I’ve got my new threads, I shall be shrugging personally at the deaths of Jews, starting with three-month-old Chaya-Zissel Braun,” he continued, demonstrating the gesture.

“This is actually a multi-layer shrug,” added Obama. “The baby killed this past week was also an American citizen, so the shrug also demonstrates my lack of empathy, connection with reality, and responsibility for my citizens – my old suits and shirts were inadequate to the task of such significant shrugs. With the new ones I feel much more empowered to dismiss Jewish welfare.”

Obama’s first order of the altered garments was delivered last week, but he only had a chance to try them on the day of the hit-and-run attack that killed Chaya Zissel and injured several other train passengers. Still accustomed to withholding or delegating shrugging at the deaths of Jews, the president refrained from a full-fledged shrug, instead instructing the State Department to refer to the attack merely as a “traffic incident” in an alert to Americans abroad.

But with the new, more flexible tops, Obama says he is prepared to handle all the shrugging himself. “My first official act on Friday was actually to spend four minutes shrugging at the Palestinian Authority’s ongoing incitement to murder Jews and its glorification of terrorists,” said the president. “These new jackets are amazing.”