The cat was away so the rat came to play. While Tony Blair, our
favorite sort of feline, jetted to summitry at Camp David, the
hairy and long-tailed M. Dominique de Villepin dared reveal himself
in a London back alley. To hold off an exterminator, he declared
he’s not about to pick sides in the Bush-Saddam confrontation. It’s
hard to imagine how much pride he swallowed to feign neutrality.
Back on his home turf in the garbage dumpsters along the Quay
d’Orsay, he’d have flashed his buck teeth and bellowed straight out
that he’s for Saddam, no questions asked. You think France ever
betrays an ally?
War progressed on other fronts. At a Tennessee Ivy League school
not far from the family plantation, the former Al Gore lectured
students on the media’s shortcomings in not paying full attention
to the great antiwar movement and its critique of U.S. policy.
Unfortunately, confusing the Tennessee college with a Southern
California Buddhist temple, the former Gore refused to discuss his
appearance at the school with the press. The students were no help
either. After asking, “Are we going to be quizzed on this?” and
being told no, not one of them took notes.
At the University of Wyoming’s formidable School of Education,
former senator and presidential candidate George McGovern, the
nation’s founding McGovernik, re-enlisted in his great cause by
accusing the President of the United States of lying about Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction. The best proof none exist is that none
are being used at the moment. But, according to George, give Saddam
the benefit of the doubt. “If they are ever going to be used — if
in fact they have them — I would expect it to be done within the
next couple of weeks…when they are being assailed and cornered in
the heart of Baghdad.” Keep you fingers crossed.
After the crushing blows delivered to piles of Dixie Chickie
CD’s, the little chickadees found a new admirer in columnist Paul
Krugman. (He must have first come across them during his secret
consulting stint for a Texas company called Enron.) Now the Dixie
gals have a new fan who already seems to be a Villepin groupie. Ms.
Ann Alexander announced in today’s New York Times that she
has added two items to her shopping list: “the new Dixie Chicks
album and a bottle of Beaujolais.”
Martha Burk is this war’s Big Bertha, taking advantage of
weakened security at home to lob loud shells at bucolic Augusta.
“It’s an insult to the 250,000 women serving in the United States
military,” she said in what may live as the most memorable flourish
to come out of this war. “It’s appalling that the women who are
willing to lay down their lives for democratic ideals should be
shut out of this club.” We’ve struck a deal with mighty-mouthed
Martha: she enlists to bring the count to 250,001 and we’ll make
sure she’s admitted.
When Saddam finds out she’s over there, then we’ll know
we’ve won.
But all bets are off if we throw in Susan Sarandon. Her way is
not the united way, the United Way decided. At post-Oscar parties,
her baby boy of a husband, Tim Robbins, threatened the
Washington Post’s Nobel Prize winning gossip columnist
Lloyd Grove with bodily harm and dismemberment if he ever wrote
accurately about Ms. Sarandon again. Grove’s New York
Times counterpart Alessandra Stanley wasn’t going to be caught
dead repeating his mistake. She took the embedded route to praise
Ms. Sarandon for the “classiest flash of protest” at last Sunday’s
Academy Awards. Flash? For the record it involved a “V for Victory”
sign, not anything requiring a zipper.
Regarding Michael Moore, who, as Steve Martin noted, was hauled
away from the Awards show by Teamsters who threw him in the trunk
of his limo, two things: First, we look forward to his underground
theater debut at one of the Meadowlands’ two end zones. Second,
though we heard the booing during Moore’s remarks at the Awards, we
couldn’t detect a single booer on the screen. Nor could anyone else
we interrogated. Was it canned booing?
War has its downside involving a loss of personal freedoms and
institutional autonomy. Our winner this week is a beneficiary of
martial law. Could be we’re playing right into his hands, since
before today no one had ever heard of him. He might as well have
been the above-mentioned Ms. Ann Armstrong, a N.Y. Times
letter to the editor writer from Oak Park, Illinois.
Regardless, by order from on high, we are compelled to crack
down on Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-Upstate N.Y.) for his pathetic
publicity stunt in sending out a letter calling war in Iraq a
U.S.-perpetrated “massacre in Iraq.” Even Hinchey’s county party
chairman was taken aback, somewhat (he’s also a Democrat, after
all). “When you have troops oversees, the rhetoric needs to be
quieted somewhat,” Joseph Ruggiero said. Rep. Hinchey has refused
to comment. Cat get his tongue? An EOW prize should loosen it.
“This guy retires the trophy,” says our man on high.
