Saturday, June 04, 2005

No, silly, we don't flush Korans. We piss on them

As an old fashioned and occasionally reality-based American, I am more troubled by the more substantive atrocities that momentarily fly by in public view as they escape the black hole of coverup and speed toward the oblivion of the Memory Hole, as if impelled by some powerful gravitational suckage--a Memory Hole for which the press, having been taught to be tidy sometime in the past 30 some-odd years, obliging flushes.

Substantive atrocities such as beating prisoners to death by pulping their thighs with clubs, and then letting them slowly hang there until rigor mortis sets in, to the surprise of the club wielders, as in, "my God, how did that happen? Will we be demoted?"

Not to mention Abu Ghraib, of course, long since whirled away and flushed as old news, now that several low-ranking solders have been punished, suitably, in the eyes of the Pentagon, which carefully and correctly gauged the demand for justice as being proportional to the media's attention span. Plus the Pentagon went the extra mile and demoted the general who says she was obeying orders that came down the chain of command, leaving it unclear whether the reason for the demotion was that she revealed that those orders existed, or that she obeyed them.

Simultaneous to this, the curious self-congratulation fandango of the media, flattering itself about of the impeachment of a rogue president, long ago, through the agency of a free and courageous press, would affect a reality-based person with an indignation more or less equivalent to being tasered (see my previous post) by hypocrisy, if we had not learned to survive such jolts during an era of media toadying previously unknown and unimagined in our history.

To get back to the subject line of this post: for those who were busy and didn't notice yesterday afternoon, the Pentagon announced hours before the start of the weekend, as is its wont when the news is needful of disappearing quickly, that we didn't flush any Korans, but we stepped on some, and pissed on one, but that was an accident. The urinator had stepped outside to relieve himself and the urine somehow got into the ventilator, whence it sprayed the Holy Book, quite unintentionally.

And I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

No comments: