Paralysis of the Mind

USA Today finally ran the predictable front-page story that has been so long in coming: That we hate Barry Bonds because he's black, and all whites hate blacks, especially rich and successful ones.

This is an idea that has been floating out there for a while. You'll occasionally hear a black sports columnist (say a Michael Wilbon or a J.A. Adande) float the trial balloon of racism every now and again. And they might -- on the fringe -- be somewhat correct. There are a lot of racists out there.

The problem I have, especially with this particular story, is the unbelievable racism that's going on in the other direction: black-on-white racism.

Think I'm kidding? Read this quote from the story:

"White America doesn't want him to (pass) Babe Ruth and is doing everything they can to stop him," says Leonard Moore, director of African and African-American Studies at Louisiana State University. "America hasn't had a white hope since the retirement of (NBA star) Larry Bird, and once Bonds passes Ruth, there's nothing that will make (Ruth) unique, and they're scared.

Excuse me? If a professor of white studies (at KKK University, of course) said that the only reason people wanted to see Barry Bonds break the record was because he was black, he would be publically tarred and feathered. Which is why I feel like when people make widespread assumptions about "White America" it's every bit as racist if I tried to put words into the mouth of "Black America."

And that really angers me. The USA Today story goes on to mention that, oh yeah, Bonds has always been surly to the media and the public and, well golly, he may have taken steroids for several of his most productive years. But time and time again, it keeps coming back to the ol' race card:

"It's so obvious what's going on," Minnesota Twins center fielder Torii Hunter says. "He has never failed a drug test and said he never took steroids, but everybody keeps trying to disgrace him. How come nobody even talks about Mark McGwire anymore? Or (Rafael) Palmeiro (who tested positive for steroids in 2005)?"

Really, Torii? I see that sportswriters are still openly debating whether or not they'll vote for either Palmeiro or McGwire based on their pasts at this point. And the racist media, of course, have set an agenda to tear down every successful black man. Or, quite possibly, they're chasing what could be the biggest story in sports history: Someone with a tainted past on the verge of breaking the grandest record in sports.

But that's never factored in. Why should it be? It makes it a lot easier just to cry "racism" and leave it at that so the media can sort it out.

There is racism in this country. There's plenty of people out there who don't want Barry Bonds to succeed just because of the color of his skin. But I do wonder, how many real sports fans are left who can be racist? Minorities outnumber whites in baseball, basketball and football. Even hockey is beginning to see some color. And NASCAR isn't a sport, so I don't have to go into their ultra-white legacy. There were racists, as Moore said above, who rooted for Larry Bird because he was a great player and was white -- but what did they do when he passed the ball off to Robert Parrish? Turn the TV off?

But what we can't talk about is a type of racism that's growing. White-on-black racism is still there, but why can't we have a discussion about black-on-white racism? I saw "White Men Can't Jump" and thought it was funny, but even then, the key assumption of the movie was that people knew white guys couldn't play basketball. And that was almost 15 years ago. And white guys can't rap -- that's today's assumed fact of life.

Yet none of that is really true. The top two college basketball players this year were J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison, both white. And Eminem (him I don't like) is extremely talented at what he does. And they get covered as though they are minorities because, in their chosen careers, they are.

Some have said that's just a form of racism, giving white guys better press. But when Bill Lester got a shot in a NASCAR race a few weeks back it was a huge story. All week, all you heard about was "Is he going to make it?" and then "How's he going to do?" He didn't so so hot, but if he were to win a race this season, it would dominate sports coverage. That's not media racism at work, that's simply chasing the story.

What it all boils down to is that we can't tolerate any racism. Racist whites, racist blacks -- it doesn't matter what angle they're playing or what agenda they're pushing, it's still racism. And far too many people don't see the problem with it -- so long as it's in one direction and not the other.

As for Barry Bonds, he's made his bed. Years of treating the media with outright contempt and years of treating fans with stony silence has left him in a position where LOTS of people want to see him fail or get busted for taking steroids. And I'm not the only one who's thinking it, either:

"I'm a big believer in karma," says San Diego Padres center fielder Mike Cameron, who is African-American. "What goes around comes around. If you don't treat people right, things come back to bite you."

That USA Today felt it necessary to mark Cameron as an African-American is too bad, but he gets to the essence of the point. If you treat people badly, they're not going to give you the benefit of the doubt later on, no matter what their skin color is.

But this isn't really about Barry, at least in the long run. It's about how far we've come since the 1960s, and how very much further we still have to go.

It's about time we stopped worrying about pesky laws.

It really pisses me off that we can't drive 80 on side streets. I've never been a fan of not loitering. Kids should be able to do ecstasy. Or crack. And then drive. Why wait until 16?

So, after more than 6 years of complaining, I'm starting to come around on the Residency of George W. Bush. Or, as his message seems to be: Laws are for suckers!

I kinda like that worldview, actually. I'm often driving behind an old person in a zone marked for 55 mph. Firstly, there ought to be no speed limit. Secondly, I should be able to arm my car with missiles (I'd prefer antimatter tipped, but I guess nuclear could suffice until techonology catches up) to obliterate slow people who are driving in front of me.

And you know what else angers me? The way Fox keeps trying to shove "Ice Age: The Meltdown" down my throat. Fine, advertise in all the old familiar places -- pimp that sucker all over American Idol... but to break up the middle of Family Guy with a half-baked half-commercial?

My antimatter-tipped missiles could take care of problems like that. I could just drive out West until I hit palm trees and just start firing. Did I mention that laws are for pathetic little wimps?

We should be able to hunt immigrants for sport. I know Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs are behind me on this one, right guys? And also, I'm in favor of feeding Christians to lions. Yeah, I know, it's so cliche, but I feel like the practice was underutilized and could be poised for a big comeback.

Mainly, though, I'm flexible on these. I'm just trying to figure out what the line is on lawbreaking. So far, starting wars, lying to the public and illegal wiretapping don't seem to be problems. Since I'm not President and can't use my official Commander-in-Chief kung fu grip, I'll boil those down to murder is OK, pathological lying is awesome and stalking is totally in-play.

I love where our Resident's head is at. I mean, rich white people have always gotten to have all the fun. OJ's trial was groundbreaking because it showed that, finally, civil rights have come far enough to ensure that rich black people could get away with murder, too.

But Bush, he's a straight-shooter. He seems like he's willing to open up the fun to people who aren't even super-rich. As middle-class whitebread, I'm totally prepared to rock with my new rights. And I look forward to living in a place, like Texas, where I can open fire on people for no real reason.

Does anyone know where I can get antimatter-tipped missiles?

So, taking a break from Puppy Curling long enough to find some inspiration for a blog entry, I snuck a peak at what funny people are saying about things in America right now.

Well, OK, scratch that. For whatever reason, Jay Leno is considered the arbiter of American comedy from his lofty high throne of the Tonight Show. He's hardly funny, but he's a reasonable bellweather of the status quo (or, more accurately, the easy joke that the unknowledgable can get). Really, Jay, Paris Hilton is not a virgin? Who knew?

But watching any Jay Leno, you realize that he, above all others, sets the tone for political discussion in the country.

There's a billion complaints about the media, ranging from it being too challenging (an 1,800-word reader on racism in the Washington Post) to too stupid (a front-page story about the world's largest Dorito) to left-wing bias (Conservatives: every paper, everywhere, every instance, always and forever) to right-wing bias (Liberals: WTF with Fox News?) and of course, about how newspapers are literally on the verge of closing all of their doors at once because woe-is-me reports about the end of print media. (Of course, their profit margins remain around 20 percent; Wal-Mart would literally dig up Sam Walton's body and use it for pagan rituals to achieve half of that on their stores. But don't tell the media.)

The problem is that outside of hardcore politicos who read hardcore politico blogs, serious people who read the NY Times front to back and dim-witted people who think Rush Limbaugh knows the answer, nobody cares what the media thinks.

I repeat: nobody cares. Nobody reads the NYT editorial page, because nobody gives two shits about what sort of wacko observation David Brooks wants to make on a middle America he's never visited. Maureen Dowd might as well be an alien visitor to most Americans.

Yeah, there's a lot of blog static and a nice chunk of people who are concerned with that sort of thing. But the masses? People understand comedians, and that's why Jay Leno is the bellweather of American politics. And that, as they say, is troooouble.

I have nothing particularly mean to say about Leno, other than I don't think he's that funny. But his political humor is popular because it's the essence of simplicity boiled down into nothingness. In his world, Bush is stupid. Kerry was rich and boring. Laura Bush is sweet. Arnold has a funny accent, and so on.

People who really care, who are really devoted to politics, raise hell about one paragraph in a Los Angeles Times story that plays a certain way that they don't like. Read any blog, on either pole, and you'll see media bashing taken to a new level. But they miss the point. We don't live in a world where people read the Los Angeles Times carefully enough to note the important paragraph. In their world, it's pretty simple: Bush is stupid, and Arnold has a funny accent.

In that culture, of course no politician could possibly be any sort of visionary. When you are your essence, when you're one thing and one thing only, how can you attempt to confrot the myriad of issues facing our country? Even a policy wonk like Bill Clinton -- who was the type of guy that liked to call up reporters at 3 in the morning as pitch them a rough draft of a policy speech -- got boiled away into a rabid sex maniac. Yep, that's just ole Bill, too busy chasing tail. Yeah, the country seemed to love him, but he couldn't possibly be taken seriously.

The same has been apparent from day one of the Bush campaign. "George is an idiot," the comedians said from the beginning. "He can't speak straight, he can't pronounce 'nuclear' and he sure as hell looks dumb."

He may or may not be an idiot. But those of us who have been keeping track know full well that he's pretty dangerous. The original refrain, though, that he was stupid hurt Bush at the beginning, but now it helps him immensely. He didn't know Dubai Ports was coming in? No big; he's dumb. Abu Ghraib? Aw, Cheney prolly didn't tell him. Iraq's a mess? Well, you can't expect much from the village idiot.

We could have had a leader who was good at forseeing what would be a big deal in America. We had our chance to pick a guy who helped revolutionize both our daily lives and the probably future of major scientific research. But as it turned out, the comedians thought Al Gore was just a little dry.

Yes, Al Gore, who was a liar, a teacher's pet, and wooden like Pinocchio, somehow found himself worse off with the comedians than the village idiot.

We could have noticed that Al realized the Internet would be big 15 years before dorks realized they could rule the world and businessmen realized porn could be sold quietly online for huge profits. We could have celebrated the fact that he was bitching about global warming in the early '80s and pushing the government to start thinking about it -- which only now are the rest of us catching up.

But, no, the comedians didn't care about that. Gore was boring! Something had to be done! And once Leno and the rest of the funny cabal got rolling, the rest of the world fell into place. Nothing else mattered once the score was set. And yeah, Bush was stupid, but even the comedians seemed to indicate it was "our" kind of stupid. Gore knew too much. Kerry wasn't charming. Bush was dumb, but dammit, he was likable. Which made him brilliant, sort of.

Of course the media is now starting to notice that Bush isn't so brilliant as he once seemed. But that's only because like LBJ once lost Walter Cronkite, Bush has lost Leno.

For Bush, it means it's too late. He can do whatever he wants, but he's lost the general public. But for us, it goes a lot further than that. I'm terrified to think of how much power Jay Leno really wields in this country. How he and Oprah set the tone for media coverage. That people actually get their news from the Tonight Show.

It's the sort of thing that makes someone who cares cringe, and think about the possibility of a Natalie Portman candidacy for President a few years down the line. And then you think, "Nah." But is it too far? If the Democrats impress the comedians first, how big an advantage would they have once the media really got into their "dissection" period of campaign coverage? And even with short hair, how is Natalie Portman still cute enough to grab your attention? (That's another post entirely, eh?)

Star power has always been more important in politics than mind power or campaign power. But comedians haven't always held the leading hand in picking presidents. At one point, the media did command the respect of the masses and were the kingmakers. Maybe it's better now without them. But probably not. Do you honestly, deep within your heart, think a cripple would be elected in this day and age? What do you think Leno would have to say about FDR?

Yeah, it's Jay Leno's world, and sitting in the White House is the biggest joke of them all.

The world in which George W. Bush and his administration were the heroes of 9/11 and untoppably popular is gone. It has been shattered and burned, crushed and blown away like so much cosmic dust.

Within the past week, several polls have come out showing that Bush's popularity hovers between 32-35 percet. This is no aberration; his polls have been trending in this direction for months now. There's just too much going on now to ignore. A lot of people aren't forgetting Katrina. Gas prices are still high as oil company profits break records. Health care is still pricey. The medicare change was confusing and expensive. And more and more people are coming to see Iraq as the worst sort of disaster: A totally predictable and avoidable one.

The latest Pew poll(approval rate of 33%) has this amusing 'graph in it:

The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent,"and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." All three are mentioned far more often today than a year ago.

Anyone who follows politics at all has noticed exactly how unpopular Bush has become, especially as his own party forced him to drop the ridiculous DP world port deal.

Well, strike that. I should re-write that to read: Anyone who follows politics and isn't a Democratic member of the Senate or House.

Because according to Diane Feinstein, Bush is still great. Hillary's coming through loud and clear: Bush has done nothing wrong. Chuck Schumer? He's got Bush's back. Joe Lieberman... ah, wait. I said Democrats, and Lieberman hasn't qualified since Cheney stole Liebermann's position in the 2000 election.

When Russ Feingold (my new hero, btw) introduced a plan to censure President Bush, other Democrats acted like he offered legislation that would arm sex offenders with machetes or something.

Why, though, I can't figure out. So far, Feingold has one supporter on board (Tom Harkin of Iowa) and one Republican thinking yes (Lincoln Chaffee). So that's 3, maybe. That's three senators willing to tell the president (who has broken the law under their very noses on top of everything else he's done wrong) that he's been a naught boy.

Three. Lousy. Senators.

One of the worst things about the last 5 years was the inexplicable love that people had for Bush. While he busily went about blowing up the national debt and doing his best to push international dischord, people seemed to love him. Even conservatives lauded him, despite his insane spending habits.

But all of that has changed. People are sick and tired of Iraq in every single way. Conservatives are starting to see Bush as two steps from being a free-spending liberal. And liberals, many of whom felt totally lost after the disaster of November 2004, are burning white hot over a disasterous 2005. It's an ungainly coalition, it's a group of strange bedfellows, but it's suddenly and completely turned on President Bush.

And this isn't a gray area, like the Clinton years, when he had lower approval ratings but was still well-liked and many thought the country was going in the right direction. Clinton, for all the right-wing hatred he inspired, was NEVER as unpopular as Bush is right now. I repeat: NEVER AS UNPOPULAR AS BUSH IS RIGHT NOW. Feingold isn't trying to impeach Bush; he's simply asking for an up and down vote in the Senate on whether or not Bush broke the law.

There is absolutely no down side to this vote. If the Democrats do lose, they've armed themselves with proof positive that every Republican and Joe Lieberman are behind Bush 100% -- behind a president who is one of the least popular leaders in this nation's history.

Or they win and they've shown backbone. And they drive a new wedge between Bush and Senate Republicans. Bush acts like a petulant child when he doesn't get his way; it'll be nice to see what would happen if the Senate did not show him "loyalty."

This is not a Don Quixote quest against a wildly popular man anymore. This is showing the country that the "opposition" party is going to show some opposition to breaking the law by an unpopular president.

Don't they get it? The battlements of 9/11 are coming down. Bush is running out of "terrorism" bullets to fire at Democrats. Even his biggest backers have no other excuse but "You can't be against the President in wartime" a cock and bull story that a wide majority of America doesn't buy.

It's an exciting time to be against Bush. But the chickenshit Democrats of the senate have to meet the rest of us halfway. They need to stop worrying about right-wing crazies and the fundamentalists -- who have worshiped Bush as a graven image since 1999 -- and start worrying about the 74 percent of independent voters who aren't behind Bush.

I called Hillary's office today. I tried to explain this to one of her aides. I don't know if she (as in Hillary... or the aide, I guess) gets it. But maybe she will. And maybe this will mean something, someday. After all, censure is pretty meaningless in the big picture -- but it's worth noting it's only been done once before. And that sort of historical measure is a pretty good place to start cleaning up the garbage Bush has left behind.

And if this doesn't work, I and many others won't soon forget that unassuming senator from Wisconsin in 2008 when the next big race kicks off. Nor will we forget the defeatism and fear of the Democrats who didn't vote for censure. Even top candidates for President don't want to upset their supporters this early in the game, right?

Last night, the NCAA tournament brackets were announced, leading to the least productive three weeks of the year for businesses. This culminates on April 3rd with the best day of sports, the NCAA final and Opening Day for MLB.

Today, around the office, the conversation has pretty much been going something like this:

"Sheets are 3 bucks, or 2 for five."

And that's OK by me, since I've been in NCAA pools since I was old enough to know not to pick Syracuse to win it all every single year. But I've always wondered how bad America's gambling problem really is, especially after working in a convenience store for more than 5 minutes and watching people who really couldn't afford it fritter away cash on scratch-off tickets.

Is it a big deal? Well, to them it was. Pay day too often meant "2 hours hunched over the plastic table in the back of the store with a penny in their hand working on $100 worth of tickets." And to us? Plenty of the people I knew who did that were on food stamps or welfare of another kind; that's your tax dollars at work right there.

State-run lotteries are one thing, of course, but with the boom in online gambling possibilities, the Feds are going to want to get in on the action. From the left, it'll probably be "to protect people from blowing all of their money" and from the right it'll be "to get a piece of that lucrative business so we can offer more tax cuts."

Trying to do anything about online gambling is going to be a political nightmare. People love to gamble and only care about themselves. They're not going to say they have a problem -- and most don't -- and will shriek if online poker goes away. But for the people who really do have a problem, there's no protection for them, other than their own willpower.

This potential fight isn't going to be like smoking, which has really become an ostracized habit over the past 20 years. Smokers know full well what they're doing to themselves -- and have obvious feedback when they start coughing up a lung on cold days.

But gambling is a lot more sinister and plenty more destructive. It can also be enjoyed safely by people who have no problem and probably will never develop one.

So what's the solution?

It's straightforward -- do nothing to online casinos, poker sites and sports books. Let the Feds get their full cut (you know they'll find a way) and then how about they turn that money into well-funded resources for problem gamblers. And they should encourage these sites to keep track of people who are online every day for hours at a time.

Will that happen? Of course not. Someone will have a moral outrage ("Gambling? It's the devil!") or a fiscal outrage (*cough cough* get in on the take, Abramhoff *cough*) or a protection outrage (Random Hollywood starlets picking this one up as a cause celeb -- in between poker games, of course). And it'll be a big, stupid fight over nothing.

I look forward to that.

But in the end, all you can really do is take Jerry Springer's advice about taking care of yourself and others. I asked a guy once why he played scratch-off tickets for hours at a time, just flushing his money away. He laughed and said, "I love it. Win or lose, I love it."

And in the end, no legislation is going to beat love. (Someone should explain that to the homophobes. But that's another post entirely.)

Oh, and Duke is a mortal lock to win it all.

If abortion is murder, why don't anti-abortion laws have provisions to throw women who have them in jail for eternity?

If abortion is not a victimless crime -- which is entirely the point -- then why is there no punishment?

These points have been slowly making their way around the halls of Blogtopia lately, and they're extremely good questions. Punishing the doctor, I suppose, is step that everyone seems pretty cheered about. Obviously, put all the doctors in jail who can perform abortions and there will be no abortions.

But what about the woman? After all, she's the one that made the decision. She's the one that will supposedly benefit from her choice. (I think that's sick logic but whatever. These people are a little crazy to begin with.)

As usual, the anti-abortion crowd crow about how unpopular abortion is. But they don't mention the natural growth of this legislation -- which is to punish women who get abortions. People are blaise in this country because they don't pay much attention to anything outside of Nick and Jessica, but tell a woman she'd go to jail over her uterus, and that might stir up trouble.

It's the same dumb logic that those gung-ho for the Iraq War were shilling for a long time. Thankfully, that little boondoggle has become widely unpopular. But within the community of "support" there was never a discussion of the fact that Americans supported the war only because they weren't asked to do anything for it. If there had been a draft for Iraq? There would have been riots in the streets from day one. Even a tax hike would have provoked outrage across the country.

It's the same with abortion. These people like to talk about morals and values, but their real goal is to make sure women are barefoot and pregnant for life -- and if that means pregnant in jail, so be it. Does anyone really think this crusade will stop at abortion? Just over the horizon is birth control, and -- again -- that fight would start a rage in this country.

Perhaps that's a good thing, since we're so pathetically self-interested in America. Many of us don't know someone who's had an abortion. But everyone knows someone who's on birth control. Unfortunately, that might be what it takes.

But until then, just stay cheery with the thought of a 16-year-old girl holed up in federal prison, just because she made a mistake. It really warms the heart.

I can understand being against abortion. For or against the procedure, it remains a difficult yet engaging moral question.

So I'm not surprised, given the current judicial climate in America, that a state chose to throw down the gauntlet on Roe v. Wade. And, for anti-abortioners across the country, this is a huge victory.

Of course, that huge victory comes with an unbelievable caveat: If the woman is raped and becomes pregnant, abortion is still illegal.

There are a lot of people in this country, whom I would say make up a good portion of what we call "the Right," who genuinely want abortion to be stopped because of their personal moral concerns. And that's OK to me; I disagree, but I'm willing to respect that they see abortion as though it were a clear murder.

It is those who prostitute that genuine concern into electoral victories who worry and sicken me, and this victory for their side is 100 percent of their own devising. For how could anyone look into the eyes of a woman who suffered so brutally at the hands of a man and declare, "You're having this child."

And that, right there, is the shallow, anti-moralistic thinking that corrupts everything about the modern fundamentalist movement in this country.

Part of the problem is the inherent sexism of most of Christendom. Part of the problem is the residual sexism of this country, and the insulting and ridiculous "She was asking for it" defense that still passes for sense in too many places. But most of the problem is the wide-eyed craziness that politicians have churned up over abortion.

How else can you describe the joy expressed in a bill that essentially blames the victims for a rape? It's madness, it's sexist, it's disgusting -- and it's happened in South Dakota. Despite the crowing from certain corners of this country, this hardly a victory of morality.

And it's crazy. It's literally crazy. The media has been running in circles trying to define this, trying to figure out which women might be able to get abortions under this new law... and nobody has had the guts to come right out and say, "This is really nuts." But it is. Who wants to tell that victim, "You're having this baby." I wouldn't, obviously, but more importantly, I couldn't. Nobody should be able to utter those contemptible phrases.

Furthermore, this is ridiculously illegal. If a state decided it was no longer going to adhere to international treaties, the federal government and the media would go apeshit. Treaties are a national matter, and so -- until yesterday -- was abortion. I haven't heard a lot of peeps coming from the Bush Administration on this one; I can only assume that the same would be true if New York state went ahead and started selling arms to the Syrians.

But the deepest problem remains a question of morals. I believe there is a middle ground on abortion, if we could have an honest discussion in this country about sex, birth control, abstinence, abortion and education. I do not, however, think anything of the sort about rape or incest. Nobody has ever come up with an explanation satisfactory to me about why rape is OK and nobody ever will because it just isn't. Rape victims in this country -- and we can only guess at how many there actually are -- need support, both on a personal level, but also on a public level. And in the anti-abortion's hurry to get their pet project underway, they delivered a stinging slap in the face of every person who's ever been sexually abused. And they spit in the faces of all of us who have known someone who was sexually abused.

And in that hurry, in this climate, the anti-abortionists decided to sell out those morals they like to talk about so much. Shame on you for disrespecting the millions of people whose lives have been affected by rape. And how silly of you, while arguing that a woman's body is not entirely hers, to leave this rape loophole open for exploitation.

Don't think any of us will forget it.

Anna Nicole Smith at the Supreme Court!!

I repeat: Anna Nicole at the high court!!

So, all in all, this has been a great week for kitsch. You know, the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic?

In addition, we have George Pataki still in the hospital, 2 weeks after an appendectomy (and like, barely a peep in the media, even the state media). The Times today admitted that Pataki was, in fact, pretty damn sick. Which is terrible. I hope he recovers fully because I'm counting on the hilarity of his soon-to-be-quickly-aborted run for Preznit in '08.

But what else is fun? How about this:

"Bin Laden determined to strike inside U.S."

Not clear enough, right? How about this:

"This is the BIG ONE" or "The levees could burst"

Still not clear? Well, then, you SIR could be President. Because as it turns out, after trying to deflect blame onto crazy Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin and evil Democrat Kathleen Blanco, videos show Bush was totally in the know about Katrina, long before he was sober smart enough to get on that sucker.

Was New Orleans worth finally waking people up to what a douchebag George W. Bush is? No. It was not. And don't think Bush is going to worry about rebuilding her, either. He's a uniter not a divider, and if you've seen Iraq lately, he's also a destroyer and not a rebuilder. (And if you've seen his approval ratings, you'd know he IS a very good uniter. Unfortunately, it's almost entirely revulsion toward all things Bush.)

But that's the kind of week that it is, especially as Mardi Gras is being held in a city that's still shattered. A lot of transplants in Houston were stunned to see the festivities; they were a little too busy tending to their lesser jobs and FEMA trailers to make the trek home and all. Don't get me wrong; Mardi Gras is a long tradition, and it's New Orleans' trademark. It had to be held, and held there. But it's impossible to say that anyone who was forced to leave the city and still can't return should be thrilled about it. Call it a no-win situation.

Luckily, as the video shows, pre-Katrina Bush said he was "fully prepared." Ludicrously tragic? Tragically ludicrous? More or less mad than Anna Nicole sitting 30 feet from Samuel Alito? If anyone would like to submit a 500-word essay on the topic, I'll grade it a la high school social studies.

And! Nancy Grace lied about her past to help her rising star in journalism. Fantastic! Maybe she should be president? Only downside I see is how she'd divert money from social programs to the brand-new Cabinet post of Secretary of Missing White Women. But otherwise, could she be worse than Mr. Can't-Take-A-Hint?

And to think, Anna Nicole Smith was sitting in the Supreme Court while the rest of the world burned to the ground.