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2005: The Year of Pharisaical Thinking [by Ross Levine] Another year, a larger deficit, more lies and bigger roadside bombs. Here's our recap of the not-so-lofty highlights of 2005: Global Warring: The Iraq war clearly dominated the year as Cindy Sheehan camped out in Crawford and her soldier son, killed in Iraq, became, as of late October, one of 2,000 U.S. servicemen and women to die in the conflict. The number refuses to level off -- do we hear 2,500? -- and despite each milestone in the march of democracy – the assembly elections in January, the new constitution in August and this December's parliamentary voting, the IEDs and suicide bombings refuse to abate. While the debate rages on -- should we call it a resistance or insurgency, a war on terror or a battle against enemy evil-doers? -- the killing continues with no end in sight. And no plan for an end in sight, either. That was, until November, when decorated ex-Marine and Pennsylvania Democratic Representative John Murtha stood up in the House and called for an immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. Murtha set off a firestorm in Congress and the nation about where the war effort is headed. The Republicans quickly pounced on him as a "cut and run" coward, but then cut and ran from that approach as President Bush, watching his poll numbers fall like the pieces of an exploded Humvee, took to the airwaves to lay out his plan for America's Iraq victory – a victory nobody in the Administration can define. Mr. Bush said it all when he proclaimed that if he knew then what he knows now, he would have prosecuted the same war the same way, giving the lie once and for all to the whole weapons of mass destruction ruse. Then what was the reason for this quagmire? Alas, the war remains so controversial precisely because it defies reason, since all its putative justifications -- protect "our" oil, spread democracy, fight terrorism – are beyond anything we've yet to achieve. Protect our oil? Iraq's petroleum infrastructure is in shambles. Spread democracy? Kind of hard when you're simultaneously spreading torture. Fight terrorism? On the contrary -- we've created a veritable terrorist Hogwarts. And so the American public is left wondering what the whole mess is about. Unlike the President and his men and woman, no one else has a clear picture of just what is going on, so all of us still in the real world can only thrash about asking ourselves why the U.S. never learns anything from its previous blunders. Iraq may not be the perfect Vietnam clone, but it sure seems like we've stepped into a mine field that, despite our superior military might, is wearing us down one flag-draped coffin at a time. The Hollercaust: Early in the year, dignitaries from around the world gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the 60 th anniversary of the concentration camp's liberation. At the ceremony, one man definitely stood out in his green parka and knee-high cowboy boots. No, not the star of Brokeback Mountain but our very own Dick Cheney. Oh well, at least Halliburton didn't build the ovens. Pajama Party: This year had the usual share of celebrity trials, proving once again that a major attribute of our democracy is how well a good team of expensive lawyers can manipulate the application of justice. Robert Blake, who returned to his car to get his gun only to find that someone had already blown his wife's brains out, was exonerated, and Michael Jackson, accused of using Diet Coke cans to slip mickeys to minors for the purpose of putting them in a molestable mood, and who showed up at his Santa Maria trial in his pajama bottoms, was found innocent of all 10 charges against him, most of them peppered with the word "lewd." (The permanently pallid Mr. Jackson soon left Neverland for exile in Bahrain, and was subsequently caught applying cosmetics in a Dubai ladies room, ostensibly because he'd misread an Arabic sign [did the sign say 'Put your make-up on in the men's room across the hall'?]) In any case, it may be the ultimate test of our success at grafting our democracy onto Iraq if, at the end of his own celebrity trial, Saddam Hussein walks free; should he be found guilty of the atrocities he's charged with, it may mean that Iraq has become more democratic than we intended. Kissin' Cousins: We don't want to make the Saudis jealous, but Bush and Joe Lieberman shared a big wet kiss in February. Now, we're all in favor of across-the-aisle cooperation, but as of year's end, Lieberman seemed to be auditioning for the Zell Miller keynote address at the 2008 Republican Convention. Smoke 'Em Out: With the death of Pope John Paul II in April, followed by his interminable funeral and the relatively speedy ascent of Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church quickly busied itself curing its public relations (and unintentionally public relations) problems. In November it issued guidelines banning those who practice homosexuality, and those with deep-seated homosexual tendencies, from joining the priesthood. The guidelines, which make no overt connection between gay priests and the Church's epidemic of institutional child abuse, refer to homosexual acts as a "grave sin." The Vatican's grand wizards also declared in the proclamation that it requires three years to overcome this "transitory problem," meaning, we suppose, that it takes 1,095 days for a spiritual aspirant to completely forget the pleasures of male-male sodomy or fellatio. By this surely unscientific reasoning, a Catholic who does not step into a church for three years should therefore be free to show tolerance towards others and live a relatively guilt-free existence. Sith Sense: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was criticized in certain quarters as a lambasting of the Bush administration. What with Darth Vader telling Obi-Wan, "if you're not with me, you're my enemy," and Queen Amidala's pronouncement in the galactic senate -- "This is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause" – well, it might possibly be true. What can we say to these critics except, "May the force be against you." And besides, their side got their own message across -- or so they claimed -- in Crusade ( or was it March?) of the Penguins, in which the blubbery birds were supposedly awaddle in family values. Science for Dummies: The battle between Charles Darwin and the so-named Intelligent Designer raged on in Kansas and Pennsylvania this year, as public school systems under the control of local imams continued to issue qualifications for the theory of evolution. The Dover, PA school district took to referring students to library copies of Of Pandas and People, a volume containing such authoritative gems as: "Because of the high level of improbability that cells could be generated by the random mixing of chemicals, some scientists believe that the first cells were created from the design of some outside, intelligent force." Just who or what that force might be is not supposed to be a topic for scientific investigation -- in other words, pay no attention to the religious zealots behind the curtain. The good citizens of Dover did pay attention, however, and threw eight of the "panda-ers" off the school board, earning them a curse from Pat Robertson for their trouble: "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city!" Yes, if there is a disaster in Dover, it will be up to FEMA to save the town, which, we fear, may drive even the most skeptical Doverian to stick Of Pandas and People on the family bookshelf. Stormy Weather: To paraphrase a certain Senator, "it takes a hurricane," and this year we had about 26 of them. Katrina was as big as they come, and like a giant spinning asteroid, she slammed into the Gulf Coast and destroyed Trent Lott's house along with entire coastal communities and about eighty percent of New Orleans. It was in that latter metropolis that the spectacle of desperate people jammed into the Superdome and the Convention Center for days without food or water awakened America to a previously unknown fact: you don't need a passport to find poverty. Yes, poverty, my friends, right here in the Crescent City, poverty with a capital "P" and that rhymes with "B" and that stands for... " black ". Not entirely, but it was hard not to notice that the majority of the people left behind in the storm were of a certain ethnic configuration. And then there was the federal government's response. Attempting to out-fiddle Nero, Bush strummed a guitar while New Orleans went under, Condi Rice searched for footwear at Ferragamo's and FEMA's Mike "Brownie" Brown arranged for his dog-sitter and seized the moment to remake himself as a "fashion god." Michael Chertoff shunned his TV and radio, and the President, after telling Diane Sawyer that nobody had said nothin' 'bout no levees breaking (or was it planes being flown into buildings?), finally decided that he needed to go to Ground Zero South and bang in a few nails. For his big "Mission Accomplished" moment, Bush planted himself in Jackson Square and promised that New Orleans would rise again. For the next few weeks, he visited so many times that Laura thought he had a girlfriend in the French. . .err, Freedom Quarter. Even Bush's mother got into the act, telling evacuees in Houston that since they were "underprivileged anyway, things were working very well for them." Some of the displaced got cruises to nowhere courtesy of the Carnival line and U.S. taxpayers. It seemed like compassionate conservatism at its finest until the Administration grew tired of the muddied masses yearning to rebuild and moved on to other concerns like tax cuts for the overprivileged. Nearly four months hence, the Big Easy lies in limbo, praying that it, too, may possibly be invaded by the American military and thus become eligible for billions in reconstructive aid. Remember The Mouse That Roared? Either New Orleans declares war on the U.S. directly or she'll need to start seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa. But that's not to say that Katrina was a total bust. The hurricane may have actually given credence to the theory of evolution, what with the way Mississippi casinos are now leaving the ocean and climbing out onto dry land. The Big One: An earthquake in northern Pakistan measured 7.6 on the Richter scale and left more than 80,000 dead. From what we hear about conditions there today, those may have been the lucky ones. Sam, John and Harriet : The Supreme Court went through a few changes this year that began with an attempt at retirement by Sandra Day O'Connor who said she wanted off the court but would stay on until the President replaced her. For her job he chose John Roberts, man of the fake real hair, at which point Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who had been at death's door for nearly a year, finally decided to open it. Roberts, after a Senate hearing in which he broke records in the number of words used to not answer a single question, ended up with the Chief's seat, leaving O'Connor's yet unfilled. Laura took the Commander in Chief aside and said she wanted an estrogen-friendly candidate, so George reached out to his nearest female sycophant, his personal lawyer Harriet Miers. Bad make-up, no judicial record and an underwhelming grasp of constitutional law notwithstanding, Ms. Miers' nomination gave us one of the year's greatest ironies in that it was the President's own party that skipped the up or down vote and shot her out of the sky. As the year draws to a close, Sam Alito is waiting in the wings, a man whose mother will surely put out a contract on him if he ever votes to uphold Roe v. Wade. As the Aspens Turn: With a name like "Scooter" Libby, it's more than likely that Vice President Cheney's chief of staff would engage in some degree of juvenile storytelling, which may explain why he's awaiting trial on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. This year, the ongoing investigation over who leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of diplomat Joseph Wilson, the man who blasted Bush for those now infamous 16 words (one of which was "uranium") in the President's 2003 State of the Union address, saw reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times spending a few months in the clink; Miller's the same gal who, through questionable reporting, helped bolster the case, in the country's most respected newspaper, for the invasion of Iraq. The Plame game finally began boiling over in 2005, and though nobody has been quite able to figure it out (least of all the editors of the Times or special prosecutor Fitzgerald ) , it has cost Plame, Libby and Miller their jobs, and put the exalted Karl Rove's powers in jeopardy (they say he was fretting so much over Plame-gate that he forgot to let George know that picking Harriet Miers was not the Christian right thing to do). The affair is sure to heat up in 2006, but it hasn't been easy to follow; as scandals go, it's like master's chess next to Watergate's "checkers" (no pun intended). If we could only decipher Scooter's secret missive to Judy: "The aspens will already be turning; they turn in clusters, because their roots connect them." Hmm, sounds like a conspiracy to us. Linda Lovelace, Where Are You?: Speaking of Watergate, 2005 was the year the true identity of Deep Throat was finally revealed, and though we could google the story and refresh our memory as to who Deep Throat turned out to be, we prefer to let him live forever as the secret phantom lurking in the halls of government who whispers the concealed truths that all of us need to hear. May there always be a Deep Throat within the Beltway. Something to Bank On?: Who would have thought that Ariel Sharon would be the force behind an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, though so far it's hard to say whether it's really a first step toward establishing a Palestinian state. After all, the wall continues to rise in the West Bank, so maybe Israel figures that if she chops off a finger she can keep an arm. In any case, given the rhetoric coming out of Iran of late, Israel may not be feeling too generous towards the Arabs for quite some time. Fill 'Er Up, Could there be a connection between 2005's record-breaking rise in gas prices and the troubles over at GM? If the company "tanks," perhaps it'll take with it the value of greed. Just Say No: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger decided he would hold a special statewide election in order to give "the people!" what they wanted and stick it to the girly men in the state legislature. He threw his sagging musculature behind first four, then five, ballot propositions that would have required parental consent for abortions, made teachers easier to fire, stifled the political voice of unions, let retired judges gerrymander legislative districts and reduce state spending on education. Despite the fact that the "Governater" eventually removed the steroids from his rhetoric and his own chiseled mug from his television ads (and forced firefighters to join him in a photo op), the California electorate voted "no" across the board and so awarded the novice bureaucrat a severe case of political castration. It remains to be seen whether a former aide to his recalled predecessor Gray Davis can salvage his Sacramento career, but not to worry -- he can always find work hawking nutritional supplements over in Beijing. Amoral Majority: The Democrats are calling it a "culture of corruption," and they certainly have a hoof or two to stand on in this reference to the rival party. Senate leader Bill Frist, who has been mysteriously demure of late, is under investigation for a suspicious family stock deal, and former House leader Tom DeLay is under indictment in Texas for money laundering and, if prosecutor Ronnie Earle gets his way, conspiracy as well. San Diego congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, known to rant in public about such themes as "homos in the military," resigned in crocodilian sobs over an incredibly lucrative – and stupidly obvious -- real estate deal that netted him a $700,000 bribe to add to his various other payola perks totaling in the millions. Now throw in the criminal investigation of right-wing lobbyist extraordinaire Jack Abramoff and it's apparent why the elephant men seems more concerned about damage control in Washington than Louisiana. And we're not quite sure if this is related to the GOP's culture of corruption, but we have to mention one of the year's best "fox paws," former "morality czar" William Bennett's comment that aborting every black baby in America would reduce the nation's crime rate. He could have aborted the word "black" and saved himself a lot of grief but men like him are only colorblind when they're prepared. One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest: It took Ronald Reagan some six years to bring himself to publicly mention AIDS, even after more than 16,000 Americans had already died of it, but a few bird flu deaths in Asia and Bush has been busy making speeches about averting the possible disaster to come. It makes us wonder whether the "Great Communicator" would have been happy to address the AIDS epidemic early on had the war in Grenada gotten so out of control that it sank his approval ratings below 40 percent. Foreign Fracases: France was roiled with riots last month by disaffected Muslims tired of second-class citizenship, Argentina saw some window-breaking when Bush came to town for the Summit of the Americas, and Australia has lately been torn by bitter fighting between whites and ethnic Lebanese. We find it comforting to know that America's not the only place where sometimes uncivil disorder is the only way to get the leadership's attention. *** And that's the way it was. We haven't covered everything, of course, but enough already – even Big Daddy would agree it's been a year of monumental mendacity. And at the risk of offending Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and our other friends over at "Faux" News, what can we say but Happy Seasons, Holiday Greetings and Merry Religiosity! 28 December 05 Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is. | GET MORE MORPHIZM
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