Graeme Jamieson ~ State of the Nation: Sock on the Nose

Forgive me for sounding off here, but I almost choked on my French Toast this morning, when old wide-eyes himself claimed Iran was “a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people...”

The irony was lost, perhaps, on Dick Cheney and Dennis Hastert, the President’s sphinx-like pillars of immunity. For me, their very presence was nothing short of menacing, peering out at the servile self-seekers, the earnest and the favor-winners, ready to scowl-out any dissenters to death, not glory, like something out of The NeverEnding Story.

For the most part, it looked like a hokey game of Stand Up Sit Down, led in the main by those two bullyboy backstops, and some strategically-positioned hawks around the room. Only, no particular face was looking anything short of grey (or shady), apart from Dubya, who seemed ripsnortingly mischievous – no doubt knowing it was Brown Nose Day – as those narrowing-eyes flitted from teleprompter to teleprompter, back and forth, to and fro – watch them roll! – to Cards A, B and C ad nauseum. While these realities took hold, the peanutless gallery looked cold and beaten, as the old room "warmed" to that familiarly pounding funk of tedious Texan heating.

I still won’t feel sorry for the American People. They elected him. By and large. I feel sorry for the other village, the one called "Carriage". I almost feel sorry for myself, my people, and their country's arranged marriage. I may feel sorrier for his high school girlfriends too, knowing now, as I do, what it feels like to be fucked, while the hunk in front of me is counting backwards in his head. The only consolation I have, of course, is that he was building up to the word “egregious” and not some pulsing fit of exaltation, in its stead.

As a matter of fact, wouldn’t it have been lovely to see something approaching that? Spare me the stretch, when I suggest that a virtual ejaculation would have made for far more freakin' phantasmagorical headlines than any far-out claims of a three-quarter reduction in oil-seduction (particularly in Algeria, Angola, Canada, Libya, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, the UK, Venezuela, and importantly, the good old Virgin Islands' Zwart Goud Union Fête).

Seriously, where are the great men of our times? Where are our Lincolns, our Luther Kings, the men and women who write these things?

Surely, in Y2W6, we deserve more? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I dug the closing parley, the references to the Big Easy, and even “our greatness is not measured in luxuries,” but surely, surely we were witness to the very purest and polarist opposite of spontaneity, delivered with no real tinge of personality, no urgent tenor of agency, and no tangible statement of sincerity?