Known by Their Fruit

For the last three years, Americans have refused time after time to acknowledge the bad faith of their leaders. The press is complicit in its failure to make the public aware of the human cost of the war. On one hand, there is American idealism that refuses to admit that George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice are not cut from the same cloth as Tom Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. On the other hand is a cynical press whose concern seems to be more interested in protecting its own interest than exposing the truth. It is, after all, more pleasant to be “one of the guys” than to be a thorn in their sides.

A Day Early and a Dollar Long

I received a disturbing letter from an elderly female relative the other day. At first, she seemed depressed, and I interpreted her letter as hinting at suicide, but after some thought, I realized that she believes that she is about to participate in the rapture.

Crazy Like a Fox

The one enjoyable pastime of the last six years for many liberals has been making sport of George W. Bush. After all, if a cretin can be president, if a man as inarticulate as Bush can actually be the leader of the free world, at least we ought to get a couple of belly laughs out of it.

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And now back to the scheduled festivities. . .

Political Magicianship

One of the elements of a successful stage magician is misdirection of the audience’s attention. Without mastering that skill, a stage magician is nothing more than a sideshow, background noise. Indeed, both political parties have been to magic school, and both parties have been hard at work to misdirect our attention to anything other than real pressing issues, particularly when it comes to self-created morasses and performance shortcomings.