Dope

Party Pooper Saddam

We do not live in the best of times -- Dicken's dichotomy should definitely be pitched into the can with yesterday's spaghetti. It is a worst of times moment. I know this by a simple glance at my checking account -- althought the truth is I never engage in that pointless exercise in scare-mongering, since I don't appreciate being trailed about during the day by the various ghosts of penury, ill-health, and homelessness.

Let's see. To add up other reasons that I'm jumping on Dicken's right-hand choice, there is the shocking state of one of my back teeth -- which incessantly radios S.O.S-es to me; the headlines; and the moody weather, which was trying out various shades of gray last week, and then suddenly got all giggly and put on an 80 degree bikini yesterday. Adjustment, you know.



So the war has inched so close to us that, according to the NY Observer, it has intruded upon fashionable Manhattan parties. The quote from Christopher Buckley about sums it up: "You really know it�s going to be bad if they do the dinging-the-side-of-the-wineglass with their spoon," said Christopher Buckley, the editor of Forbes FYI. "People react the way Quasimodo reacted to the ringing of the bells: �Oh shit, here it comes.�"

The shock and awe bombing strategy pales by comparison. Baghdad may crumble, Basra may fall, but the dinging-on-the-side-of-the-wineglass -- well, Mr. Magoo would put something like that right down, by George! And, as Chris B. points out later in one of the quotes in the article, those wineglass ringers are just doing it to get attention:

"I find that people who bring it up, they tend to be people who are not in the business of opinion-giving," he said. "If you�ve got 10 people who are all chatting happily over what are you doing this summer, or what are your kids doing in school, or the new Degas exhibit, or what is your new S.U.V., or what about the new Byron edition, and someone says, �What about Iraq?,� I think it�s a desire to be an attention-getter. That�s code for, �Now I�m gonna tell you what I think of Iraq.� It�s a counterfeit invitation."

Like the mercury in a thermometer rising to unaccustomed heights in a heat wave, a thought, a sincerely crafted, real thought can, in a moment of national crisis, even rise up, up, up into the brains of the blue blooded and overflow into their parties, leaving everybody a little sticky. Really, as a Mr. Hoge is quoted as saying, ""I think there�s a body that�s building of, �Let�s get it over with."

Surely this is as good an argument for war as any made in D.C., n'est-ce pas?"