This Blog has Seven Days

In a hundred years, nobody’s going to remember the third week of May, 2011. It won’t appear in history books alongside June 15^th, 1215 or December 7^th, 1941. Actually, it’ll probably be overlooked entirely because historians will be beating their keyboards promiscuously over the death of a terrorist named Osama bin Laden who got double tapped by some Navy boys, two weeks earlier. Such is the fickle nature of the human experience that a classic week, like this one, will be relegated to the dustbin of history. Luckily, however, the democratization of the 21^st century has given anybody with a laptop the opportunity to chronicle our time, which is exactly what I’m going to do.

The week started off — without a bang — when our planet avoided the Apocalypse. This is a better trick than you might imagine, given that the world has been coming to an end ever since humans discovered it had a beginning. Fortunately, Harold Egbert Camping at Family Radio (the guy who started the fuss) admitted he made a mistake and did some quick recalibrations. He’s now saying, without a doubt, October 21, 2011 is the new dawn for the end of time – so at least we’ve got that to look forward to. Just a bit of an aside though, for all those people who donated money to Family Radio — FYI – Harry’s not about to give refunds on a technical error.

Meanwhile, over in Hawaii, a boatload of the world’s prominent psychiatrists are meeting to rewrite the textbook on crazy – literally. Apparently, there’s something called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or affectionately, the DSM-5. This little number is the official GPS for the Valley of the Loons and it hasn’t been significantly revised for over twenty years. It’s serious stuff. The plan is to cut the number of personality disorders in half — from 10 to only 5. Euphemistically, this means last week’s patient is next week’s eccentric or more succinctly, yesterday you suffered from narcissistic disorder; today, you’re a conceited jerk. On the brighter side, depression may become sad again, and anxiety might lighten up a little and just be worry. The problem these folks are facing is what is nuts and what is just odd? And there are heavy-duty ramifications. For example, although there’s something definitely wrong with Lindsay Lohan, Tiger Woods might not be a sex addict at all; he might just be horny. Regardless, the real live Fraser Cranes of the world are going to have to figure it out because the new DSM-5 goes to print in 2013, and they better have their disorders in order by then.

Speaking of nutbars, in a blatant attempt to grab some headlines, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker revealed to the Toronto Star that they would not reveal the gender of their four-month-old child, Storm. My first question is why did the Toronto Star want to know in the first place? Is the gender of nondescript babies hot news in Tee-oh, these days? Storm’s parents are calling it a “tribute to freedom and choice.” I’m calling it grandstanding — at the expense of an innocent kid. After all, if you want to keep your child’s gender a secret, the best thing to do is shut up. In point of fact, the last place you want to go with the news is the Toronto Star — circulation over two million. And that’s without all the other news outlets worldwide that picked up the story. With all this avoidable media attention, I’ve a real hard time believing Kathy and Dave are doing this for the good of the child. Personally, I think teaching kids that gender neutral is a good idea, is a good idea, but you can’t fool Mother Nature no matter how bright the media spotlight is.

Which brings us to the biggest media spotlight of them all – The Oprah Show. Young girls all over the world are breathing easier now that the long, cold night of Oprah Winfrey is finally over. They aren’t going to be told, day after day, that there’s something wrong with them: that they’re emotionally fragile, they’re stressed, they need to relax, they’re fat, ugly or abnormal. Under the thin guise of empowering women, Oprah has held a dark tyranny over her audience for decades. Day after day, she’s hammered home the idea that women have to change their lives. But now she’s gone, and younger girls everywhere will escape the omnipresent Oprah. They can quit reorganizing their lives and get on with living them. They can go to the spa because they like it, not because they need to relax. They can swim twice a week ‘cause it’s fun, not because they need to trim the tummy muscles and tighten the bum. In short, they don’t have the wicked Queen looking over their shoulder anymore. My only hope is that she doesn’t pull a Bret Favre and try to get back in the game. The ego explosion that was the last week of Oprah was enough to may you give some serious thought to that Apocalypse.

This was just one soon-to-be-forgotten week in the history of our world. Ain’t it fun? I guess I’m glad we did miss the Apocalypse – again!

Barack Obama: Partying like it’s 1967

I’ve never seen the movie Dumb and Dumber; I don’t have to. All I have to do is sit back and watch President Barack Obama and the US State Department stumble around, stomping on the flowers of the Arab Spring, and I’ve pretty well got the storyline. These guys make the Keystone Kops look like Sherlock Holmes. Obama’s most recent foray beyond the Beltway, on May 19^th, was one of the oddest speeches I’ve ever heard. Apparently, it was a major policy statement. Who knew? From my point of view, Barack Obama’s Middle East policy sounds, looks and acts like a 2011 cut rate rerun of the much despised Bush Doctrine. To be sure, Obama stuck to his guns and threw in a lot of rhetoric about change, but that was probably just force of habit. After all, he’s been yipping about change for nearly four years now — without very much of it actually happening.

Anyway, according to Obama, the way America will effect change in the Middle East is by throwing a couple of billion dollars at the Egyptians, starting a civil war in Libya and ignoring Tunisia and Yemen altogether. Furthermore, if Bashar al-Assad in Syria doesn’t quit shooting people in the streets America is going to get really, really angry. And, if Ahmadinejad in Iran continues his reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons, Barack will personally denounce him and call on the world to apply more sanctions, more often. None of this is new or even news.

After that, the speech was padded out with some fancy footwork, dancing around the situation in Bahrain, where, it seems, there are several different ways to ruthlessly suppress political opposition — and America recognizes all of them. There were some further admonishments of Iran – like Ali Khamenei cares what Obama thinks – and a friendly wave to the women in the crowd. However, absolutely glaring by its absence from the Obama Doctrine was any mention of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. To be fair, Pakistan is not technically in the Middle East, and perhaps Obama will get around to them later, but Saudi Arabia is smack dab in the middle. In fact, its importance in the area is what most presidents have called “paramount.” Talking about the Middle East without talking about Saudi Arabia is like singing the Old Macdonald song without any of the animals: it doesn’t make any sense. I hate to resort to rhetorical questions but: Is the Kingdom so perfect as to resist the forces of change and self-determination Obama’s talking about? Or did they just get lost in the desert? Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind the realpolitik that says leave the Saudis alone; I just distrust the motivation. After all, those are Saudi troops in Bahrain.

Of course, Obama saved the best for last – Israel — and the guy was on a roll. He started off by saying “the status quo is unsustainable” then went on to say “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines…” I’m not even going to grace this with an argument. Obviously, the people in the State Department have never seen a map of the Middle East. Israel’s pre-1967 borders were indefensible; that’s why they had a war! Granted, it only lasted six days, but it was pretty memorable. Who, in their right mind, would think those same borders could be defended any better in 2011? Wild guess? Nobody!

The world has changed since 1967. For example, back then, Elvis was a newlywed, Che Guevara was still alive and a guy by the name of John McCain had just got himself shot down over North Vietnam and was checking in for an extended stay at the Hanoi Hilton. We were watching Get Smart, The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan’s Island on TV and Aretha Franklin was about to record “Respect” – the first time. Personal computers were unheard of, phones were attached to the wall and most cars got three miles to the gallon. Hell, we didn’t even have the metric system! If “the status quo is unsustainable,” how does turning the clock back 44 years help the situation any?

The problem is that it’s not Obama’s fault. He doesn’t know anything about foreign relations. Niall Ferguson, a well known British historian, has said — on more than one occasion — that the guy’s clueless. He’s depending on the State Department to treat him right; this is where you get the dumber part of the equation. The US State Department has never been the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, and recently they’ve been spending most of their time unplugged. This latest adventure in the world of the unknown is just a continuation of the stumble/fumble in the Middle East that started last December. For example, now that the Egyptians are going to try Mubarak for murder, do you think Gaddafi’s is going to go quietly? Sometimes I think Hillary’s recruiting her researchers and diplomats at WalMart.

Luckily, Hezbollah and Hamas are still going way too fast on the Crazy Train to let the Palestinians take advantage of the situation. Nothing is going to happen
for a while, and by that time maybe the American people will quit relying on Hope and Change and take a look around them. Me? I’m going to give up
downloading movies and just watch CNN for laughs.