(This starts a bit dry. And semi-factual. And you might start thinking, "God, he's lost his edge". NOT. This'll be a long one, and you may want to break it into parts, but I just can't, so give yourself some time. And be patient with me, dear reader, because when I get to our current circus performer, The Amazing Dubyah, you'll either hate me or love me, but you won't doubt this boy can rant). 

   As was beautifully, intelligently and incredibly accurately portrayed in that "out of touch Hollywood lefty pinko subversive" George Clooney's amazing film, Good Night and Good Luck, Edward R Murrow galvanised the nation in front of their television sets in 1953-1955 with the McCarthy Senate Subcommittee hearings and his response. While it showed the value of this relatively new medium in getting an important message to the masses, it wasn't until a few years later that politics really began to cross the line into pure entertainment.

   In September and October of 1960, a young, upstart senator from Massachusetts, war hero and eldest sibling of the closest thing to royalty we had in America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had the temerity to challenge presidential candidate and sitting Vice President of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon, to a series of televised debates. That first debate, on Sept. 26, 1960, drew 70 million viewers and established, once and for all, the power of seeing things as they appeared to happen. The modern information age was born that night, as was it's frater dementis, public opinion as fact. (I've tried hard to find out how many sets actually existed at that time and couldn't, but know that even in this day and age of 2.5-sets-per-home average, 70 million viewers is an extraordinarily high number).

   In substance the men were almost perfectly matched, and both incredibly informed, smart and politically and intellectually astute. But Kennedy looked like the hero we so desperately longed for as a nation recovering from a century of bad wars and worse politics, while Nixon simply looked awful. He had been injured and hospitalised the month before, was pallid and underweight, and refused makeup. Kennedy, on the other hand, had spent his summer campaigning in California, was tan and fit, and didn't need any. The term "the female vote" was firmly embedded in the lexicon after those debates, and polls and history showed that while both sexes listening on radio proclaimed Nixon the winner by a decent margin, those watching on tv gave Kennedy the overwhelming edge. And clearly catapulted him into the Oval Office.

   By 1981, we succumbed, as a nation, to the "method politics" of a man who really did start out as an actor, Ronald Reagan. From second banana to a chimp to head of SAG to Governor of California to President of the United States, this man utilised all his camera skills, and then some, to woo, and win, the nation's heart. Not necessarily it's head, though. And in spite of some brief, shining moments during his tenure, he made a lot of us realize that we were now doomed to style-over-substance politics. And the crossover was near completion.
 
   Jump cut to June of 1992. Trailing badly in the polls to then current President George Bush, (Bushdaddy), Arkansas Governor William Jefferson Clinton, shows up on The Arsenio Hall Show, in cool shades and playing, (badly, and I should know - I'm a bad sax player), a shiny tenor sax, turns his campaign completely around and goes on to trounce Bushdaddy into a one term presidency and seize the office. And seals the deal for ever and always, proving you gotta be entertaining to be successful in politics.

   So what the hell happened in 2000 you may be asking yourself, as I still am? We had any number of candidates who could work the camera, and thus the public. So what was the problem? Amongst the braying Donkeys (jackasses?) we had: Al Gore, then Vice President and extremely savvy in the ways of mass communications, reining himself in when he should've been letting his natural skills, and, yes, charm and humor, run wild; Howard Dean, smart as a whip, figuring out that the internet was to 2000 politics what television was to 1960's, but letting his enthusiasm spin out of control with that now infamous yelp, that in essence tanked his political ambitions forever, in spite of the fact that it was a pluperfect TV moment; John Edwards, telegenically handsome, rural but slick corporate attorney-politico, ineffectually trying to please everyone; and John Kerry, another Massachusetts-war-hero-turned-politician with the golden opportunity to return us to our glory days but the terrible lack of comfort on-camera, rendering him inept at getting his smart, hopeful views across. And in spite of this discomfort, and with enough smarts to choose Edwards as his running mate, Kerry led the Donkey slate. 

   On the other side, there was only one Elephant in the room. And no one wanted to talk about him, but everyone did. Legacy Yalie, first ever two-consecutive-term Governor of Texas, and now legacy presidential candidate George W. Bush. Only problem was, (and it wouldn't take very long to discover it), the legacy he, and his handpicked-by-Bushdaddy's-cronies co-conspirator, Halliburton Dick Cheney, would leave the country. 

   Nor would it take long for his handlers to discover the right notes to hit to make enough of the country sit up and listen. And since he was, in essence, seemingly brainless and malleable, they propped him up and had him play the most divisive possible song, based on blatant lies, (remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?), and we should've known what we were in store for. Because lies are like potato chips. You can't have just one. With the ultimate art-of-war winning principle, divide and conquer, he won the war for the presidency. Sort of. Because while the populist vote went to Kerry/Edwards, in a not-so-surprising decision, the Supreme(ly stupid) Court rendered that moot and awarded the electoral college to Bushbaby/Cheneyburton. And a presidency of greed, deception and manipulation, like none we'd ever seen before, was launched. Now That's Entertainment!!

   Now, we'd had untruthful leaders before. History clearly shows us that you have to spin some yarn to get that warm and fuzzy government sweater to fit the whole country. It's really no big deal when it's in our collective best interest, so we've been told. In modern times alone, Truman, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy all had minor scandals. Nixon surreptitiously taped his way out of office, and Clinton tried to keep a blow-job from his wife, and then the country, which almost got him booted...

   But NOTHING compares to the outright lies we've suffered at the hands of the current administration, and they're foisting them on us by putting on a well-produced, slicker-than-slick SHOW. Using the media in ways no one could have foreseen to stun us silly so we don't notice that off-camera they're screwing us royally.

   We thought we had a chance, when after the disastrous events of September 11, 2001, we saw our president don a hard-hat and get in the rubble with the crews and act strong, outraged, resolved....hell, presidential. We quickly forgot that the morning of the attacks he sat reading to a group of second graders for 20-some-odd minutes while the Towers burned, because that was a TV moment. He just couldn't pass up that photo op, despite the fact that the worst attack on American soil and citizens was clearly under way. Now That's Entertainment!!

   We thought, again, we had a chance when his commissioned lackies came up with justification for starting a war against an "evil empire" that possessed Weapons Of Mass Destruction, ("affectionately" labelled WMDs - probably because the full term was too hard for him to remember or pronounce). No matter some of his own people decried the results of that investigation. No matter there really was NO solid proof of WMDs existence. No matter those people who publicly doubted would be maligned by the administration so badly, even covert operatives were outed in retribution and their families libelled and slandered by his immediate circle of sycophants. No matter, because the administration now had reason to go on TV regularly and declare us "winning the war on terrorism" to the point that a few short months in, Bushbaby had the colossal gall to "suit up", in spite of the fact he never actually earned the right to wear that suit, and on a US aircraft carrier declare the war WON. No matter. Because spin is everything and here 4 years and well over 2,000 American deaths later, we still really haven't even gained traction, no less momentum. Or even come close. Resulting in, among numerous other things, a cynical, tongue-in-cheek nightly signoff on MSNBC's brilliant "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" declaring the ever escalating count of days since that declaration of victory. Now That's Entertainment!!

   I could go on for weeks with this, as any even-not-so-keen observer of current events could. But I won't for everyone's sake. As I contemplated, then wrote, this piece I felt my blood pressure skyrocket constantly, and I'm in decent shape. (So how do all those "fat-cat" friends of his cope?) The listening in of our conversations; usurping the constitution as he sees fit; awarding huge contracts without a bidding process; interfering in right-to-die cases; changing the tone of The Court, (thus altering, or making, history for at least 30 more years); finally admitting the next president will have to deal with getting us out of the mideast after all those declarations of a "plan"; missing the boat on Hurricane Katrina essentially letting an African-American-yet-purely-American city drown; Bushmommy donating to the Katrina Relief fund with the codicil that an organisation led by another Bush progeny benefit exclusively from that donation; invoking religion, faith and GOD as justification for it all; and on and on and on and on ad nauseum. 

   So I will end the rant with what I feel was the lowest, most insidious, self-serving PR play Bushbaby's ever made. And that's a helluva statement if you read the last paragraph alone. Early last week he graced us with a rare press conference. (They're always entertaining if for no other reason than to see what Letterman will do with them. His staff does a brilliant job editing them into pieces that are even more entertaining than the press conferences themselves. And, gratefully, shorter). At said event, the prestigious, long-serving White House correspondent, the venerable Helen Thomas, was finally, after two years, allowed to ask a question. And, as it turns out, was "set up" by the Pres to be his fall-guy for lambasting the "media" as the ones perpetrating only the "bad news" of HIS war. The Media. Now That's Entertainment?

   My friend, the woman with the most beautiful smile in the universe, Kate, tells me she'll no longer buy stamps with the Statue of Liberty and the American Flag on them. She's appalled and embarassed. I feel her sadness, pain, contempt, and amazement at our current state deeply. I was so completely and totally enraged by this slight to Ms. Thomas, and the total lack of ethics and morality it indicated by the way Bushbaby used her, that I can't even rant about it. Let's just say on this ploy alone, (not including the countless others I've listed, and those I've chosen not to), Bushbaby deserves the hell to which he will eventually go.

   And that's really Entertainment.

(And now I'm gonna rest, and build a fortress to insulate me from some of the responses I just know I'm going to get. Next up......I'm not really sure....let's see what moves me....if I haven't been seized by Homeland Security.....)