A flunkie applauds, a nation sighs

Much is being made of the cynical silliness in Dubya mentioning 9/11 five separate times during last night's ridiculously-staged event at Fort Bragg. I've spent some time this morning reading through the postings, and almost all of it falls along previously established demarcations in the rhetorical sand. What Dubya had to say - and the scandalously shallow way in which he said it to a reluctant and small national audience - will be parsed for a newscycle or two and then we'll be back to the stories that matter (such as the search for truth in a helicopter being shot down in Afghanistan with 17 soldiers aboard). I'll admit a slightly delayed viewing of the actual "address" on my part - Sarah and I used the luxury of Grandparental babysitting to sneak off and catch a movie yesterday ("Batman Begins" - a full-recommendation and a solid B rating from my scale with strong performances from everyone except the surprisingly featherweightish Katie Holmes and uncharacteristically lame Liam Neesom). But I'm watching the TiVo'd coverage on CNN and had to weigh in on the most appalling story from this morning about the stagecraft. ABC NEWS reported that the one applause break in an otherwise somber reaction from the crowd of soldiers occurred when a Bushie advance team member started clapping. I just watched it - in slow-motion with the sound WAY up - and it's entirely obvious that the Bushie plant started clapping out of camera range before Dubya had even finished delivering the line. And the CNN feed shows the best-framed soldier in a sea of similarly postured and beret-wearing studs refusing to join in on the applause. If you look closely enough (and I did, trust me) you can even see the guy next to him nudge him to join in, to no avail. So while we're all told to support the troops and that they support their Commander in Chief without reservation - ah, hell that's a load of horsehockey, as Colonel Potter would say during the depressing later M*A*S*H* seasons. The wheels are coming off, people. Last night was a prime-time differently-staged version of the same old same old. Anyone who says otherwise will take tons more bad news to convince them that things are unrecoverable in Iraq. And I personally don't have the stomach for that sort of punishment.

There's tons more to say, but that little crassly-staged tidbit tired me out. Plenty of other things to address that are much more worthwhile. Hopefully in all our lives. Rock on.