I do solemnly swear
Leading up to the inauguration -- and even during the inauguration speech -- talk was wafting from the administration that further Iraq-type conflicts would be forthcoming. Soon, it was said, the Middle Eastern neighbors of Iraq, Iran and Syria, would be undergoing Iraqification procedures. Freedom was expected to sweep through the region, like so many mortar shells exploding against the non-up-armored hull of American Humvees. Perhaps even, it may well have been suggested, the inevitable invasion of the Northern Middle East1, nee North Korea, would finally get serious attention.
In light of all this loose talk, and the spectacle surrounding the dawning of the second age of our Brush-Clearing Sun King, I began to feel as though we were all preparing to relive the closing scenes of The Godfather, where Michael Corleone has the heads of the opposing crime families whacked during the baptismal ceremony of his nephew / godson. The scene unfolds as the priest performs the rites of the new-born (the first rites?), but the ceremony is puntuated with cut-aways to the assassinations occuring elsewhere.
I sort-of expected to see something similar on CNN. Scenes of carnage punctuating the pauses between Rehnquist's administration of the oath of office and Bush's repetition of the same. Hugo Chavez being garroted as Bush places his hand on the bible. Rehnquist beginning the oath as Kim Jong Il is popped through the eye -- and through his coke bottle glasses -- while he lay on a massage table in Vegas. The president promising to "execute the office", and then a quick cut to scenes of Fidel caught in a crossfire at a tollbooth (wrong scene, but hey). Packed in somewhere, Robert Mugabe hung from a Kami Shrine (entirely different movie, admittedly) and the body of Yassir Arafat exhumed and burned (just to make sure). Finally, as Bush is repeating, "and defend the Constitution of the United States", I expected a CNN live-shot of the mushroom cloud over Mecca (the proposed conclusion to Mel Gibson's new George W Bush biopic).
1 - 'Middle East' in the Bushian vernacular has come to mean: "colored people who oppose my holy wrath". Similarly, 'Old Europe' has come to mean "Jesus-Colored people who oppose my holy wrath".
In light of all this loose talk, and the spectacle surrounding the dawning of the second age of our Brush-Clearing Sun King, I began to feel as though we were all preparing to relive the closing scenes of The Godfather, where Michael Corleone has the heads of the opposing crime families whacked during the baptismal ceremony of his nephew / godson. The scene unfolds as the priest performs the rites of the new-born (the first rites?), but the ceremony is puntuated with cut-aways to the assassinations occuring elsewhere.
I sort-of expected to see something similar on CNN. Scenes of carnage punctuating the pauses between Rehnquist's administration of the oath of office and Bush's repetition of the same. Hugo Chavez being garroted as Bush places his hand on the bible. Rehnquist beginning the oath as Kim Jong Il is popped through the eye -- and through his coke bottle glasses -- while he lay on a massage table in Vegas. The president promising to "execute the office", and then a quick cut to scenes of Fidel caught in a crossfire at a tollbooth (wrong scene, but hey). Packed in somewhere, Robert Mugabe hung from a Kami Shrine (entirely different movie, admittedly) and the body of Yassir Arafat exhumed and burned (just to make sure). Finally, as Bush is repeating, "and defend the Constitution of the United States", I expected a CNN live-shot of the mushroom cloud over Mecca (the proposed conclusion to Mel Gibson's new George W Bush biopic).
1 - 'Middle East' in the Bushian vernacular has come to mean: "colored people who oppose my holy wrath". Similarly, 'Old Europe' has come to mean "Jesus-Colored people who oppose my holy wrath".