Distracted by Christmas Sale Flyers

Distracted by Christmas Sale Flyers

Just when you thought that things couldn’t get any worse in Iraq, the Bush Administration launched a “victory” PR tour to counter common sense: the Bushies are redefining victory (see “Rumsfeld Dances on the Edge of Reality”, Dec.6, below) the way they redefined environmentalism. You’ll recall that the “Clear Skies Act” rolled back a generation of air pollution safeguards and slurred opponents of its passage as being against clean air. The same kind of anti-logic is being applied here, but in this case it is just not sticking with the same success, despite the earnest and articulate Rumsfeld rhetoric: “To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks.” Hmmm…

For the second time (the first was when Americans saw forgotten bodies floating in the water in New Orleans) , dramatic numbers of Americans are wondering if their “liberal” friends might have been right all along – have the lunatics taken over the asylum?

Well, if you can’t sell ‘em, distract ‘em, right? The administration stepped out of the way and a horde of Christian rightists appeared as a plague upon the land loudly proclaiming their heartfelt moral indignation that … can you believe it? …. retail store flyers aren’t using the word “Christmas” in their advertising! Heresy, indeed, has smote our once sainted land of X-boxes and Ipods! Big box chains are spending millions of advertising dollars to market “holiday savings!” when every circular should proclaim “Christmas Sale,” according to these clowns. The whole campaign might be good for fifteen minutes of cruel ridicule on the stage of twisted millennium American culture if these guys weren’t so dead serious. (“Use the word Christmas in your ads, goddamn you, or we will boycott your stores!”)

I was planning on devoting a few hundred words to dispute the illogic behind their illogic when it suddenly struck me that the whole thing was a ludicrous smoke ring to obscure the Iraq War debacle that continues to spiral out of control, despite the fact that victory has been redefined to include daily terrorist attacks. Let’s not talk about Iraq. Let’s talk about how godless atheistic liberal traitors have tried to steal Christmas from a god-fearing nation that wants to get the best deal on a plasma TV from a flyer featuring Jesus with wrapped DVD’s under his arm. Just don’t talk about Iraq. Jesus, please don’t talk about Iraq …