THE LOVE SONG OF GEORGE W. BUSH

THE LOVE SONG OF GEORGE W. BUSH

The National Intelligence Estimate report that came out yesterday is scary. It confirms that things are rather dreadful in Iraq. But just like American Education, Katrina, our troops and the proper equipment they need, the lead-up to the war, that damning NIE report has been, it seems, left behind. Certainly, Chimpy and his ilk have either not read it or not read it carefully.

But if you don’t do your homework, how would you know anything about this report?
For those interested in learning more, read today’s front page of The New York Times, or better yet, get yourselves over to Drinking Liberally to read a better than Sparknotes overview of things.

This report has been sort of tucked away along with other news; hence, the reason I’m still “channeling” Carol Anne from the other side—check out my "Poltergeist" post below. The media has grown so adept at what to emphasize and what to smokescreen.

This is why we’ve been overexposed to the madwoman-in-the-attic, male fascination with Hillary lately. The New York Post this morning has a picture of Hillary, with fists in the air, and a subtitle reading, “pumping her fists and shouting to the rooftops, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed yesterday to bring an immediate end to the war.” Now I’m not a big Hillary fan, as I’ve criticized her on this blog and others, but can we PULEEZE move beyond the Bertha Mason, hysterical female references? Yes, the media needs them as part of their smokescreen. Even porn-star named Mitt Romney has chimed in with his suggestion yesterday that Hillary is too “timid,” sissy-like in her comments on Iran. Enough is enough, though.

Other non-news to take our eye off the NIE report include the typical stuff about the Super Bowl, which is more than understandable; a headline about why the sea smells; the winners at the professional eating competition, which you’re all dying to know about; and other random kibble and bits, including the latest buzz from the Hollywood set—Kevin Federline, folks, has a Super Bowl commercial.

Meanwhile, for those of us who try to stay wide awake in dreamland, terrible tornadoes ripped through Florida yesterday, and many are dead; at least 95 are dead in a suicide attack in Baghad today, which is more evidence why we shouldn’t send additional troops into what Senator Hagel calls a grinder; and there was serious flooding in Indonesia. In the age of George W. Bush and his “No Child Left Behind,” it seems oddly routine, then, that some news remains in the foreground, and some is, well, left behind.

Lately, I’ve been wondering why W. won’t come to the inevitable conclusion about Iraq: we need a change in course, a complete change, not an adjustment, not an escalation, but an entire new plan. All of his posturing, symbolic gestures like firing Rummy, ignoring all his father’s men—the Iraqi study group, suggest not only a stubbornness to do the obvious but an unwillingness to face what he’s (un)done. In this respect, he’s becoming more and more like Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, who remains almost trapped in front of his mirror with his behind to everyone else, “etherized” while the world crumbles around him, listening to the people come and go—leave and die—talking of “michaelangelo.”