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America after Anna Nicole
 After long study, I’ve concluded
that our leaders are not necessarily trying to be funny. But you are entitled
to draw your own conclusions. All I really know is what I see on the cable news
channels. This was my only contact with the outside world for several days
recently,  when
my furnace was dead and I was forced to check into the Bates Motel (now under new management).
This
weekend those channels gave thorough coverage to one of the great
mysteries of our time: Who is the father of the late Anna Nicole
Smith’s baby? The issue may ultimately have to be settled by the
Florida supreme court. (The child does not yet appear to have implants.)
But we
can’t rule out the possibility that the same man is the father of Mary
Cheney’s baby. Everything seems to point to Scooter Libby, unless
he’s being made the fall guy again. The vice president has called Libby
“one of the finest individuals I have ever known.” That’s
a fall guy, all right. Most people don’t call their friends
“individuals.” When the Cheneys need something done, they turn
to Scooter.
Meanwhile,
Barack Obama has made it official: He’s running for president. He
made the announcement in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln once
kicked off his campaign, just before Lincoln’s birthday. Taking the bull
by the horns, Obama proclaimed his faith in “the basic decency of the
American people.” He offered no evidence to support this bizarre
belief.
He also
hopes to “transform the nation” and to have his face on the
penny, an honor traditionally reserved for dead white males. He seems to
forget that Lincoln didn’t even want black people voting in Illinois. And
really, why would they want to, anyway?
Obama is
mounting a serious challenge to the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton,
who has a huge early lead in the polls and name recognition. Obama also
enjoys high name recognition, except that many voters think he is the head
of al-Qaeda, understandably confounding him with Obama Hussein bin Laden,
the radical Islamist Holocaust-denying wife-beating terrorist.
Hillary has
other problems. Liberals are suspicious of her for supporting the Iraq war.
She has also voted for legislation to punish flag burning and against gay
marriage; but she has taken full responsibility for these votes, explaining
that she would have voted the other way if she had known then what she
knows now.
![[Breaker quote for America after Anna Nicole: And before Hillary]](2007breakers/070212.gif) In
addition, she has ankles like a
rogue elephant. Can she keep them concealed until the primaries? Those
ankles may be the touchiest political secret since FDR’s frail health in
1944. Her voice reminds you of an elephant too. A really angry one. If Obama
is smart, he will challenge her to debate before a live audience in Bermuda
shorts.
Perhaps
only one candidate could have united the fractious Democrats this year: Al
Gore, with his mainstream message of global warming. Unfortunately, Gore
has just been buried by an avalanche in Buffalo. (Earlier reports that he had
been mauled by a polar bear were erroneous.)
Not that
the Republicans don’t have their own problems, even apart from their
presidential hopefuls. They are currently distressed by Iran’s
“meddling” in Iraq. Apparently nobody in the party owns a map.
As I say, these people may not be being funny on purpose. They just get
sincerely annoyed when others meddle on our planet.
Most
cartographers agree that Iran is situated right between Iraq and
Afghanistan. When you invade countries on both sides of another, much
bigger country, with regime changes all over the place, well, as the late
Donald Rumsfeld used to say, “stuff happens.” Think of it as
the birth pangs of a new Middle East.
The
Republicans’ world is collapsing all around them. Imagine how they felt
as they watched the Dixie Chicks triumph at the Grammy Awards. It may be
their good fortune that we don’t know — and may never know
— how Anna Nicole felt about the troop surge.
All of which
prompts the reflection that those of us who don’t live in Florida are
missing something. Within a fortnight it has given us the Super Bowl, the
astronaut love triangle, and the Anna Nicole tragedy. It’s almost more
excitement than I can bear.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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