This relative lack of fresh targets, combined with some military body-count book-cooking, gave the appearance of an improved situation. As far as Bush was concerned, Iraq and its government had gained stability.
In truth, Iraq was so unstable that, even by US estimates, one-third of everything that America shipped into that nation was being diverted to the black market, a/k/a the insurgency (suggesting the real number is at least 50 percent). The country is now so thoroughly corrupt it makes post–Soviet Russia look like the home of the square deal. It actually would save money to stop bolting our things down in-country, because the loss of bolt-removing devices is running upwards of eight figures a week.
Bush is an insult that we’ve come to expect, but with the head pre-rotted, the rest of the fish grew increasingly gamey. Politicians, notorious for their sensitivity to polling data, developed a blind spot to the overwhelmingly poor approval rating given to the war in Iraq. In this alleged democracy, one-third beats two-thirds, providing the big money is behind the one-third. Land of the free, my ass.
Also from Iraq came the story of the brave men and men of a “private security firm” called Blackwater USA — the vision of all-American entrepreneur Erik Prince. A few years back, Prince realized that what this country needed was a way for the private sector to simultaneously profiteer on both temp workers and war. Before long, his troops, trained in North Carolina but welcome in health-care facilities nowhere, were drinking and shooting their way into the hearts of America and its swell new super embassy in Baghdad. Oh sure, they massacred their share of innocent Iraqis, but who at the State Department was about to complain about the drunk guys with the automatic weapons?
It passes for culture
By late winter, the electronic media tired of covering mundane things such as wars. On February 8, the news-o-tainment divisions caught a break when hillbilly superwidow Anna Nicole Smith died of a drug overdose. Finally they had a story fluffy enough to provide continuity from the evening news straight through Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.
When Anna Nicole Death fever finally died down, electronic journalists zoomed in on the mischief that actress Lindsay Lohan, debutante Paris Hilton, and pop phenom Britney Spears got into on several fronts — including fast-food restaurants, Rodeo Drive, and a slew of nightspots with names like Vermin. These gallant newshounds discovered that people who have had dicey upbringings tend to run amok when they’re given millions of dollars, unbelievably good drug connections, flashy automobiles, and the mistaken impression that the world revolves around them just because their every parking ticket receives more media attention than a category-five hurricane.
Fire with fire
While American children spent the year playing Russian roulette with Chinese toys, teens and alleged adults dabbled with even deadlier devices. Despite a continued obsession with foreign terrorists, Americans had much more to fear from our own pistol-packing neighbors.
The year’s worst domestic massacre occurred when a mentally ill Virginia Tech student (name omitted because infamy attracts maniacs) opened fire and killed more than 30 students and school personnel (exact number omitted because nuts will, if you’ll forgive the term, aim higher).
When the killer was identified, he was remembered as strange and dangerous by all who came into contact with him — except for the gun-and-ammo merchants he patronized, to whom he seemed like a perfectly normal brooding loner.
Within hours of the tragedy, some people began lamenting how it could have been avoided . . . with more guns! Long ago in an episode of CBS’s All in the Family, Archie Bunker went on the local news with an editorial reply to a story about metal detectors at airports. His solution? Don’t collect guns at security checkpoints, distribute them! This satirical take got big laughs in 1972. In 2007, the same idea became a matter for serious discussion among talking heads.
The Price of Shame
Two major things went down in Minneapolis this year. One was the I-35 Bridge. The other was Senator Larry Craig (R- ID), who was arrested during a spring sex sting in a men’s room at the Twin Cities airport. Any pilot could have told Senator Dumperhumper that going into a stall would lead to a tailspin.
Craig’s tough to read; not even veteran third-base coaches can decipher some of his hand signals — though many choreographers seem to understand his footwork. No one knows for sure what the cowboy senator from the state as wide as his stance was looking for in that bathroom, except to agree that it was probably oral or anal sex with a man. Nevertheless, the thought of this family-values and publicly homophobic reactionary pulling potty trains was as guiltily humorous as the idea of a hypocrite who got nailed by the very morality police his ilk happily sends out to sniff toilet seats.
The bane drain
So many members of Bush’s inner circle left the administration this past year that someone must have planted one of those high-pitched, rodent-repelling noise machines somewhere on the White House lawn.