Along came Bo....

With the news item of these last few weeks one could be excused for thinking we had slipped down some worm-hole of time and landed in the Middle Ages. To borrow from the character of Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction - things are taking a decidedly medieval turn. Think about it…what has monopolized the news in the US? It is all about, as De observed, pirates, torture and plague!! It has me nervously looking for signs of the four horseman of the apocalypse. Talk about the ending of days!

If it wasn’t bad enough with the constant coverage of the US going to war against the pirates (and the inevitable comparison between Obama’s response to the Somali hijacking of a US ship and Thomas Jefferson’s own diplomatic and military joustings with the Barbary pirates during the 1780s) but then the Obama administration released the legal advice that had been provided supporting the use of certain “interrogation” techniques. This of course sent the right wing commentators into a feeding frenzy of patriotic indignation. Dick “Darth Vadar” Cheney still steadfastly maintains that the use of the techniques such as waterboarding was not torture and that the US is now less safe because the Obama administration has made a stand that outlaws torture. Somehow they are trying to argue that the use of torture is now less effective, or as pin-head Carl Rove insists they are now “ruined”, because the rest of the world know about it…hmm. Let me figure this one out. If they know you torture…it won’t work. Sorry Carl, forewarning of the possibility of torture doesn’t render it ineffective. The best take (as ever) was provided by Jon Stewart, who made the observation on the prisoner that had been waterboarded 183 that you would have thought that after 90 or so episodes that the CIA would have realized that it wasn’t going to work.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=224287&title=we-dont-torture

Then you had the lunatics like Sean Hannity claiming that waterboarding is no big deal and offering to be subjected to it to prove the point. It is truly beyond bizarre. There have been signs that the united front of the conservative pundits on Fox news is breaking however, with the expletive riddled demand from Shep Smith that:

WE ARE AMERICA! I DON'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS IF IT HELPS. WE ARE AMERICA! WE DO NOT FUCKING TORTURE! WE DON'T DO IT!

(see it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/22/shepard-smith-torture_n_190350.html)

Only problem is…that they do! The whole “we don’t torture” debate was further elevated by the observation (by Senator Ted Kennedy, among others) that the US had executed Japanese war criminals in the aftermath of World War 2. Their crime was what is now categorized as “waterboarding”. So…if waterboarding is not torture now, then the Japanese soldiers who carried out the same technique on Allied soldiers were not torturing…so??? Why were they executed?

Which brings me to the final part of the trilogy – the pandemic. It is more than disconcerting that the swine flu is killing people in Mexico. Strange that it is the same virus that is sweeping across the US but it is not killing people.

So we have plague, torture and pirates…but there has been one moment of levity, of light relief. Thank you, I say (to whatever divinity is still there) for Bo. By Bo I mean, of course, the Obama’s new dog – a gorgeous Portuguese water dog. After much hype, Bo finally arrived and the Washington press have been, I have to say, embarrassing in their excess. On the radio show “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” they punned that Bo had tried to hump the President’s leg, to which the media corps protested that “That’s our job”. Michelle Obama has tried to take the heat off Bo by telling all and sundry by saying that Bo is “crazy” but, hey, if it is a choice between the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse and Bo the crazy First Family Dog? Well me…I’ll take Bo every time.