Boys of summer stick around (530 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.85 on 7 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Steven Durel (View user info) at 2006-08-17 17:32:54 EDT
Summer is typically a time for relaxation. Youths have historically used the season off from school to get wasted with buddies, never fearing cell phone calls from an enraged parent demanding to know about 10 missing dollars, a busted lawnmower blade and the remnants of a violent bonfire out behind the barn. Summers in the New American Century are a bit different, though, and in these strange last days before Armageddon even Joe Lieberman has to think twice before putting on his swim trunks.
Things admittedly got pretty bad for Joe when Connecticut Democrats booted him from their party with extreme prejudice in August's primary, opting for Greenwich multi-millionaire Ned Lamont, who campaigned on a popular anti-war platform. Though the three-term senator and former chair of the imperialistic Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was publicly castrated in front of the whole country, he still plans to win the general election on November 7. Diamond Joe has already assembled his own "Connecticut for Lieberman" party, staffed by fellow droopy neoliberals and funded by the likes of United Technologies, Purdue Pharma, The Hartford, Aetna, Citigroup, Sempra Energy, UBS, Guardsmark, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.
The White House has also remained supportive, even though Bush directly aided Lieberman's defeat by planting a kiss of death on his oversized melon-head last winter. Responding to the outcome of the vote, Vice-pres. Cheney declared that the results would only encourage terrorists who hate democracy. As part of their commitment to Lieberman, Republicans aren't supporting their own senatorial candidate, Alan Schlesinger, who has fallen so far back in the polls that even the Green Party's Ralph Ferrucci will probably beat him like a paraplegic squid.
Indeed, leftist Connecticut Democrats had far more luck getting their candidate officially recognized than did their Mexican counterparts. Following Mexico's presidential election, the successor of Pres. Vincente Fox was announced to be fellow National Action Party member Felipe Calderon. Unfortunately, the Party of Democratic Revolution's nominee, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, claimed massive electoral fraud and ordered a recount. Met with only institutionalized resistance, Obrador summoned supporters from across the country to converge on Mexico City. Hundreds of thousands of protestors quickly set up camp, blocked streets and sung outside government buildings.
On the other side of the Gulf, Fidel Castro spent his 80th birthday in a hospital bed after intense stomach surgery. He was visited by his brother Raul, who he placed at the helm of the red bureaucracy while ill, and Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez, self-proclaimed vanguard of the Bolivarian Revolution. Inside the sterile room the three men chuckled over lame jokes, congratulations given to Fidel for outlasting Che by more than 37 years now and still having the elasticity to survive this latest melodrama.
As Castro's life had hung in the balance, a tidal wave of glee swept the United States. The Miami region reverberated with honking horns and even the Red Sox's Mike Lowell was demanding the dictator's head on a silver platter, mouth preferably stuffed with fine cigars. While CNBC whined about Cuba's decades of unpaid restitution to Coca-Cola, Sec. of State Condi Rice made it clear on Meet the Press that "our role will be to help the Cuban people, when the time comes, to have a peaceful and stable democratic transition."
Meanwhile, war raged in the Middle East — and not just in Afghanistan and Iraq. In July, the Israeli government began bombing southern Lebanon to kill Hezbollah guerrillas, who simultaneously fired Soviet Katyusha rockets into northern Israel. Most blame Hezbollah for initiating the conflict by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers on July 12, but others note that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) abducted a Palestinian doctor and his student brother from Gaza on June 24, kindling clashes with Hamas. Either way, over a hundred Israelis and a thousand Lebanese were murdered, along with several United Nations observers who were incinerated in an Israeli airstrike that UN Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan called "apparently deliberate."
Both sides eventually claimed victory, international support swelling for Hezbollah and the IDF achieving Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz's objective to "set Lebanon back 20 years." Iranian state television pronounced the defeat of Zionism while Fox News said the exact same thing about what we are now supposed to call "Islamo-Fascism." Both accounts seem accurate, since no one has really walked away a winner.
That's the way it goes, though, at least in this millennium. Business, politics, war and stomach ulcers do not take vacations and won't disappear with the turning of the leaves. The autumnal halls of higher education are bound to be many students' respite from the "real" world outside, yet to others, those ominous rumblings on the horizon will never be far enough away.
User Reviews
Submitted by 2004Dreaming (user info) at 2006-08-25 06:49:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
HEY!
BRING BACK COLLEGE GUY
PLEASE......
Submitted by Spacegrass (user info) at 2006-08-18 11:44:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well-written. What's a "neoliberal"? Is that what we used to call a "moderate"?
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2006-08-18 09:18:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2006-08-17 19:31:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck you, I thought this was gonna be about that Godawful cover of the Ataris song.
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-08-17 18:25:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
E for effort
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2006-08-17 18:21:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I like your style.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-08-17 17:44:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Why haven't you taken up pot-smoking like all the other nice boys?