The talking heads have this week become engaged in a bizarre, twisted parody of a Bud Lite commercial. Civil war! Sectartian violence! Civil war! Sectartian violence! Tastes great! Less filling! Pundits on both sides are popping out of the woodwork with their own favorite definitions for the term “Civil War”, tweaked of course to fit their own personal viewpoint on what’s going on over there.
Now, I’ll be the last person to criticize those media outlets which have actually had the courage to step out of lock-step with the administration and its chosen terminology for doing so. My problem with the way this has unfolded is that the debate over semantics is overshadowing the actual news that feeds it. Hundreds of civilians dead every week, basic services still not restored in many places, thousands fleeing to neighboring countries, and American soldiers (who should never have been sent there to begin with) still being injured or killed on a daily basis while the Saudis and Chinese grow richer from the amount of money we’re borrowing to pay for our little Middle-Eastern excursion… and we tune in to the network news for the latest round of to-may-to vs. to-mah-to?
For all their faults, at least the Bushies provide the comedians with plenty of material. I can’t wait to see the Daily Show and their ilk get hold of the latest memo from the morality-through-ignorance “abstinence education” folks over at Bush’s Department of Health & Human Services, which recommends sexual abstinence until age 30!
For the 90-plus percent of Americans in the 19-29 age bracket who are sexually active, this is the point where you’re supposed to say, “Oops! Too late!” For the rest of you: I’m sorry about your condition, and I hope medical science finds a cure for it in the near future.
Today is Susan’s birthday and I won’t say how old she is, but I will reveal that, should we have the energy after a big steak dinner and the nightly chore of getting the kids into bed, any activities might engage in will be sanctioned by the Bush administration. Well, that is, unless they’ve also issued guidelines on positioning, or prohibitions against… oh, never mind.