Fooled Again

CW FISHER I was ill and it was hard to blog so I wrote an opera. When I returned to blogging, I came back different. Madder. I have never used the F word in my writing for reasons too fucking numerous to list, but suddenly I was working fistfuls of fucks between syllables and daring you, yeah you, to suck in advance my daily special in the event you disagreed -- all in the spirit of simply getting somebody's attention. I got hate mail, lost some friends but kept it up. And along the way I like to think I learned a few things. I discovered I'm not un-American after all, I'm anti-un-American, ashamed of us all, sickened that we're even discussing torture let alone enacting it into law after this big phony show by Sen. McCain yields a loss which is sold in the press as a gain for Highroad, America -- and we buy it because we don't frankly give a fuck if it's a fake to protect George Bush and the entire U.S. government against future allegations of war crimes, as if that'll work. And it will, of course, already has. Frankly. We're happy to simply believe we stood up for something. That We Made a Difference. McCain's got the time to make a cameo in The Wedding Crashers, and he's got time to make a cameo on The Senate Floor. Self promoting phony. Sadly, the brightest and bravest Americans, and there are only two of them, are both comedians. Bill Maher and Jon Stewart have just enough courage to scrabble up the hill and almost touch the monolith ..before running away giggling like monkeys. I understand their first job is to make us laugh, to see, like monkeys, that it's okay to touch the monolith, and then to do like monkeys -- only human beings are not monkeys, and Americans aren't even descended from them. Plus they don't give a fuck, they move on. I'm still standing at the side of the hole that swallowed a plane and vaporized 47 people but didn't singe the grass. I'm waiting for one honest man, or both, to come right out and say it: that the world is America's gitmo to be done with as a few people please. But maybe I expect too much of our comedians. I do not expect anything of the mainstream press since the death of journalism. I haven't seen a journalist since they were first embedded in 2001. Today's googlized news offers us the same three carefully placed paragraphs in 37 languages. We haven't noticed yet because, who scrolls? You don't scuba when you surf. Bill Clinton goes off on Chris Wallace last week -- and it's shocking. Shocking to finally hear the truth. It's even more shocking the next day when you see a small part of it out of context, punchline to a sendup by a newshour "host." Everything's shocking these days. That it took Clinton five years to speak out, that's shocking. You'd think all this shock would come at the expense of some awe, but no. I'm in shock, still, over 9-11, staring in holes. There's something fishy about two airplanes vaporizing on the same day, one in Pennsylvania, the other in the Pentagon. There's something fishy about not two but three towers spontaneously falling at the speed of gravity due to a fireball of office furniture. I don't need to hear the engineers' explanation or watch their animations -- because I can't get that far. I can't get past those disappeared planes. All those vaporized people. Where did they go? Were they ascended up into Heaven? You see. So I am stuck on a fundamental question. I am irritated by secondary questions, such as why the question fails to ignite much curiosity, but I am transfixed to the fundamental issue of vaporization and the transmogrification of matter, though I'm often reminded that that part of the parade has passed. It's like I see dead people. I've tried to talk to them but they appear intent on eating me. The only place I do not see dead people is in that hole in Shanksville. No plane, no paper, no people. I feel like poor Zapruder. Like it's gonna be a long parade before traffic starts moving again. I watch it in slo-mo but fast forward to the end. It's all a grassy knoll. Except for that hole. Oh, and that one too. And that one.

Why Bush Remains

CW FISHER George Bush controls the soul of America and nothing can be done. Because if Bush is ejected, Cheney's inserted. Check and mate to checks and balances. Bush is irreplaceable, unimpeachable, and has a brother with presidential ambition. Will America find its lost courage and send this evil presidency to its own private Guantanamo? Perhaps once it's figured out how. Here's a clue in two words: Spiro Agnew. Sounds like Latin but it's Greek. Spiro Agnew, for the new historians, refers to the name of an American vice president under Richard Nixon who was whisked out of office on charges of tax evasion in order to make room for a more suitable replacement for the soon-to-be-exiled Nixon. Congress installed Gerald Ford, Nixon went to his own private Hanoi. No trial, no sentence; no muss, no fuss; he was simply shouted out, and America was cleansed. Sadly now there's a new stain on the presidency. But it's only sad so long as we believe it's chocolate. So long as it's chocolate it's a mere shame, like a spoiled party dress. Laundry is, after all, dirty by definition. It's no secret that humans leave stains where they sit, and that presidents are human. Some stains, like Nixon's, are said to have stained the presidency itself, while others, like Clinton's, stayed on the dress. Bloodstains are a different thing entirely. And this president has left a trail of it, none of it his, since before he emerged out of Texas. As governor he executed with glee, taking out nearly 600 men and women, guilty as sin without a second glance, kill em. He took his show national then all around the world, twice. America still has time left to do the right thing and take back its country. But if we wait it out the opportunity will be lost. It's wrong to whistle past graveyards while bodies are still being brought in. When Americans decide it's over, it'll be over. And it'll be fast.

They reproduce!

CW FISHER. All it takes is one locust to show the world how edible it is and suddenly it's suppertime. In the morning you wake up with a horrible stomachache, you look around and see an eaten world, you gasp, burp, and smell the grass on your own breath. Yes, you guilty jerk, you let the lies in, you let the lies out. You swallowed it, you spread it. Nice going. Grasshopper. I often wonder why it took me so long to call these spades Spades. Why did it take me five years to suddenly see clearly that 9-11 could not possibly have happened the way we have been deliberately led to believe it happened? Why? Am I dumb? Or am I deluded? Have I gone round the bend? Did I see one too many YouTube(TM) movies? Am I really suggesting that The U.S. Government is engaged in a coverup? Have I lost the Mother Ship? Who am I kidding? If I spent more time studying New History, I'd know that conspiracy theories always rely on the improbable idea that any government is capable of pulling off something so difficult. I'd know I'm a lunatic in advance, and could have spared myself a lot of unnecessary typing. Why can't I get it through my thick head that terrorists, specifically 18 al Qaida funded terrorists under the direction of Osama bin Laden were solely responsible for this horrible series of perfectly executed acts on the very day the entire air force had been sent away for war games? Why is it so hard for me to believe that the US government had no prior knowledge of what was about to happen on September 11, 2001, but that the same government knew exactly what happened just 72 hours later when they released the pictures of all 18 men? Sometimes our government nails it. That's all. In this case, all 18 terrorists were identified, their stories were made known and haven't changed much since. They left a clearly marked trail of paper, videotape and eyewitnesses, Congress wrote a book about them, the case is closed! What's wrong with me? Why do I think this case warrants further investigation? These weren't just routine plane crashes that the FAA would investigate thoroughly. This wasn't Lockerbie, where they completely reassembled the aircraft just to see what happened. These crashes were historical events on the scale of Pearl Harbor. These crashes occurred on sacred ground where monuments will be built. Yet I callously disrespect the memory of the innocent dead, I insult the sanctity of their privacy. What dying person would want the world to hear their last desperate cries for help? I wouldn't. I wouldn't want anybody to know what really happened. It would have been too horrible. I would have wanted you spared. Yet still I wish. I wish because I wonder. Why are these tapes sealed? Why can I read a transcript, but I cannot hear the real thing? Do you see how bad I am? My own government knows me well enough to know that I can't handle the truth--I'd break down in a puddle right there. And I appreciate my government looking out for my sensitivity, and for confiscating all those video recordings of the Pentagon being hit by a missile, I mean airplane. You see? Why am I still asking questions? Is it medical? Do I have a chemical imbalance? Should I Talk To My Doctor? I used to just wonder where everybody else was. Where's CNN? ABC, NBC, CBS, etc? Where's my backup? Oh, they come out now and then. They shoot, then go under cover again. It's weird. What scared away the press? Were they cowed by inclusion, by being pronounced 'embedded,' as if that's a compliment? Was it the Daniel Pearl thing? Afraid if they talk too much, they'd lose their head? Couldn't be. Was it the anthrax that somebody sent those big talkers like Tom Daschle and Tom Brokaw? Must have worked because they went away. But we forgot about the anthrax even before they were finished terrorizing us. Americans just aren't interested in mail. It really has to blow up. We didn't even notice when the anthrax investigation led to the United States Army. Yawn, we said. So what scared the press? Could it have been all those unidentified guys with cameras who still take pictures of protesters, bloggers and out of line journalists? There could be something to that. Works for me. Email is enough to freak me out sometimes. Certain anonymous comments have been dissuasive, even for me, for a while. But that can't be it. America's not a nation of chickens, and neither is its press. We don't go to sleep when they pull a blanket over our cage. Do we, Tweety? Tweety? Having written for a living I remember certain incentives for writing clearly. If you write for TIME, for example, it pays to remember your boss is Bugs Bunny and AOL. Journalists caught in this increasingly common predicament wisely opt for prose too thick with equivocation to be mistaken for opinion. Paycheck signers who are publishers tend to get what they need in order to protect the franchise that is writing the checks, and the moment you understand this is the moment you will understand why your prose is so flabby. This is probably the best explanation for the absence of heroes in the press. It explains why there are so few of these formerly very obnoxious types sticking their microphones where they don't belong and asking what the president knew and when did he know it. Paycheckism might even explain why the mainstream peers are adding to the disinformation stream by marking the fifth anniversary of the day Bush attacked America with their own handmade propaganda. Everybody wants to re-revise history now that Bush has shown the way. It's fun, and easy. But I'm so terribly ashamed of myself, for while my paid brothers and sisters are off promoting their local affiliate's 9-11 tribute to the brave whatevers, I'm still wondering when they're finally going to pull Flight 93 out of the ground.

Crikey, not Steve

Steve Irwin, "Crocodile Hunter," is dead at 44, killed by a Sting Ray he was frolicking with while taping in Australia yesterday. The ray flicked a barb off its tail into poor Steve's heart muscle and shot poison through his body while he, true to his own character, ripped the barb out of his own chest and died in a spurt of blood. Which is to say he died as he lived, with enthusiasm.

A Memorial Day for Labor Day

CW FISHER Sellebrate your big day off, American Laborer, as if you still existed. Drink beer, eat brats, take your antacids, but go to bed early because you've got work in the morning! Fall asleep knowing that the minimum wage still holds as it has for nine years, defying both inflation and gravity, and know you're in good hands as long as you don't wake up. Show up as if you had a contract or an actual fulltime job with real pay and honest-to-god benefits that show up when you need them, and pray the illusion holds through your retirement and untimely death. But if you think Labor Day was created to honor the American Laborer you should know something. It all started by accident when a government worker mistyped "arbor." No profitable government honors labor. Where's your thinking cap? Your grandfather, who had the courage to form unions, fought not for dignity but for pay. Grampa wasn't stupid. He knew about talk, he knew that talk wasn't cheap, it was expensive, and it came out of his pocket. He just wanted a day's pay. He didn't want a debate. He wanted his money. And when it still wouldn't come, he decided he wouldn't either. And only thus did the motherfuckers cough it up. That's how it works to this day, and that's why the American labor force, which no longer exists, no longer demands proper payment. It doesn't exist. Grampa was long on courage but short on foresight. If he only knew what would happen when the fates granted his one wish: that his grandchildren might be spared his own humiliations and get themselves a college degree. Jesus, Grampa. You missed it by this much. Thus were all his hardwon dollars sucked back into the septic, and thus was bred this turd economy where laborers are for laughing at. Mencia, who features his own mind on television, tells us we should walk into McDonald's and ridicule these people who are too stupid to know that you're not going to get anywhere in this country without a college degree. Laborers are for firing. Reagan's legacy was to show us that to strike is to self-terminate. Problem solved. We like our thinking caps snug as ski masks. Brat?

A Fascism Statement

CW FISHER. Rumsfeld's History Lesson: It's 1938. Islamo Fascists are running amok in our streets, signing up Youth, blowing up not only themselves and our children but our sacred institutions, our Y, our Piggley-Wiggley -- and any so-called American that that refuses to see the truth is a Chamberlain. Appeasement? Never! What a goddamn puppetshow this guy is. Ashcroft was bad, but Rumsfeld. We are witness to one very very poor player fretting lines taught him by others while struggling to hide his great doddering stride into fullblown dementia. Who writes his stuff? Hm, Dick Cheney. Try Islamo Fascists. Islamo? Why Islamo? Try it. Islamo? Try it. Islamo. You're right. Got a ring to it. Told you. Islamo. Like it. If these people weren't so evil they'd be funny, like on a show. But this is not a show. This is not a show. This is not a show. L'il Dub learned up all his line too sho nuff, reciting em all over the worl, Islamo-Fascists- Islamo-Fascists-Islamo-Fascists, like promoting a new Wham-O product, a pocket fartpad, a hoopla hoop. But gosh, ain't he cute lately, like a little monkey, so cute. Reg'lar people. Good people. Doin' his job. The Decider. Reading up on old Camus, that rascal, him and that old Peter Rabbit. President Cheney speaks out of the side of his mouth for a reason. He learned from the sins of the father, doesn't want us reading his lips. Remember, he gave the shoot down order. The one his military wouldn't obey? It's in their book, The 9/11 Omission. Swing low, sweet Cheney-o.