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I guess I can stop buying all that duct tape, but it was still a big news
week for getting ready. At the Pentagon, the spawn of West Point has produced
a set of scenarios packaged like T.V. dinners, ready in days with or without
the cooperation from Ankara necessary for a Turkish front. According to
the Times, 225,000 American and 25,000 British servicemen and women are
now in striking distance of Iraq, and more can be airlifted in at a moment’s
notice. Meanwhile, France, Germany and Russia let the world know in no
uncertain terms that they are ready to veto a Security Council resolution
authorizing the use of force to disarm Hussein. In response, formerly
dovish Secretary of State Colin Powell told Russian television that the
United States would go to war with or without U.N. backing. This is a
sad irony, given that a U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, led the founding
of the institution for the express purpose of preventing frivolous armed
conflict. But these are sadly ironic times, the biggest joke of all being
that our Nation by, of, and for the people is being bulldozed into a war
it doesn’t want by a President it didn’t elect. As John Ashcroft
readies legislation that will strip our constitution of its last vestiges
of meaning (see Nat Hentoff’s column in the Village Voice), I am
left to wonder how much emptier the words “freedom” and “democracy”
can get. We will doubtless find out sooner than later: Be Prepared.
In other insurance news, the POTUS is also pushing a Medicare proposal
that will cover the costs of prescription drugs for the elderly only if
they switch to private providers. Sick grannies on the traditional state-sponsored
plan would have to spend $4000 to $7000 a year to even qualify for a drug
discount-card.
—dt
The final brick has
been placed on the peak of the pyramid of corporate oppression. We are
kittens in cages. We are washed-up celebrities on late-night talk shows.
We are images of our own impotence, printed on soiled twenty-dollar bills.
I am referring, of
course, to the recent decision by State Farm and many other insurance
companies to exclude damages from nuclear explosions and radioactive fallout
from their policies.
While the Bush administration
has, so far, done little to counteract this collective act of domestic
terrorism, American citizens can only hope that there is some part of
the USA PATRIOT Act that prescribes a punishment worthy of those who would
prey on Americans and their wallets in such a time of fear.
Along with the inalienable
rights established by our forefathers—except for the ones about privacy,
which must be sacrificed for national security—we must protect our
right to be reimbursed should terrorists decimate our homes with nuclear
blasts. If, God forbid, duct tape somehow fails to protect my family’s
home from nuclear fallout, and should my family and I escape seemingly
inevitable death or deformity, the first number dialed by my mangled hand
will be that of my insurance company.
Now that dream of
starting life anew seems lost. How can we support a war on terror without
the knowledge that we will be fully compensated should a nuclear explosion
destroy us all? We cannot. We must take to the streets before it is too
late, before the terrorists take our homes, our cars, and our insurance
policies.
—adp
Grandma: “You can’t have the shows without the commercials.”
Me: “Well, you certainly can’t have the commercials without
the shows.”
Grandma and me: thesis, antithesis.
And what, you ask, is the synthesis?
Infomercials.
Ah, dialectics.
—scr
Post can say what it wants about Spring Style. But they have no style. (Because
they don’t have me.)
—jsg
The name of the Colombian
trade unionist in Nicholas HortonÕs article is Hector Giraldo, not Giraldo
Hector. The illustration for last weekÕs ÒBacheloretteÓ piece was done
by Changhi Yoon.
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