Do You Feel A Draft Around Here?
Do You Feel A Draft?
This news story about the Selective Service System comes as no surprise. American soldiers dying by the day; benefits and expectations lower than ever for servicemen and women, and government-sponsored invasions and occupations of foreign countries in order to enrich the coffers of Halliburton, et al . . . is it any surprise that fewer enlistees appear at recruiting centers? How else, other than by reinstitution of the draft, will Dubya be able to continue to send fresh bodies into peril, so he can attempt to shore up his place in history?
Of course, Dubya will be remembered amongst the likes of McKinley and Fillmore.
Humor is Serious Business
When Clinton was President, humorists made fun of his Arkansas roots, called him Bubba, and visual fun was made of the biting of the thumb and his lower-jaw-thrust when speaking. Later into the Presidency much humor was derived from his escapades with women, and his lawyerly query as to the definition of ìis.î
When Dubya is made fun of, it is not his personal foibles one sees as the focus. Rather, it is his apparent dumbness, and his general insensitivity [to those of a different mind then his].
Humor, as we well know, is really a very serious business.
Clinton, of course, was (and is!) a real smart guy ña Rhodes Scholar, no less-- who could also be viewed as somewhat of a rapacious rube from Bubbaville; thence the Arkansas/Bubba frivolity.
Dubya, though, is generally depicted as a cartoonish clown of minimal depth. He wears that silly suit and lands on an aircraft carrier, in a Halloween-style Kodak-moment screaming of opportunism. He fractures the language. He chokes (but not to death, so thankfully we do not have President Halliburton) on a pretzel.
And he manages to use September 11th as a springboard for the War Against Iraq that he and his chums Rummy and Cheney had envisioned all along.
Making, of course, the humor of this Supremely-appointed ocupant of the Oval Office seem more like a tragedy. The thin line between laughter and tears gets more haggard by the day.
