Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Remember that show Get a Life?

The Supreme Court is beginning its hearing on the "Under God" clause in the Pledge of Allegiance. Regardless of my own personal beliefs, it's obvious that it is uncomfortable and a tad unconstitutional to imply in a forced oratory that the entire nation is under the same 'Higher Being,' for lack of a less AA phrase. However, the issue itself isn't even the tip of the Crazy Iceberg. The man who initiated this challenge, one Michael Newdow, is not only representing himself (D.C. sniper much?), but he's also channeled all of his creative juices into an album of folk music representing his atheist views and distaste for the man. Think Joni Mitchell meets Mark Harris. In Mr. Newdow's own words, "Aren't we a better nation because we got rid of that stuff?" Excellent point, especially the part about the 'stuff.' The mother of Newdow's child is a born-again Christian who is a half-million dollars in debt with legal fees, something she says the Lord will help her through. I don't know about the Lord and money, since Bush and the Lord are apparently tight as brothers, and our country is a crazillion dollars in the hole. Perhaps let's stop throwing the Lord's name around so much and concentrate on the facts: this country's current and most recent former administrations are embroiled in a bloody game of dodge ball over whether 9/11 could have been avoided. The fact is, it happened. Instead of intently focussing on rebuilding Iraq or annhilating terrorism in Afghanistan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. God forbid we would punish Bush's rich buddies), or deeply thinking about free trade, we're all looking dumbly around the room and pointing fingers. And we still have time to cry brokenly about how we've been scarred by the utterance of two words each morning in school. This is why I love this country so, and why we will never be destroyed: because even though our president (and others before him) is a smirking fibber, and even though hundreds of troops died for easily avoidable reasons, no matter how effed this country may become, we will always have something else we want to change, and someone willing to freak out in public to change it. Our citizens love a good nutjob, and that includes our friends, our significant others, our president, ourselves. Long live the United States of Crazy.

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