State Of Dis-Union

Why didn’t the media pundits who took to the airwaves in the wake of the broadcast call Bush on the carpet for his cultural chauvinism, after he once again arrogantly delivered such an insipid speech that was an insult to the intelligence? How could they let him get away with saying virtually nothing about New Orleans, as if FEMA’s still doing a heckuva job? And what sort of neo-plantation has this nation turned into when Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, was arrested and frog-hopped out of the Capitol

The movie Brokeback Mountain revolves around a couple of rugged cowboys who supply their wives a steady stream of lies to cover up the real reason for their regular rendezvous in the hills of Wyoming. This latter-day Western, a steamy homoerotic melodrama, is effective in exposing the fallout visited upon the unfortunate families of fellows on the down-low and deep in denial.

Ala the latent lovers of Brokeback, it looks President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are content to let Baghdad be the hill they’re going to die on. For despite deliberately deceiving the nation from the start about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, they have never come clean about the basis for the original invasion of Iraq.

And instead of apologizing or offering an exit strategy during his latest State of the Union address, the President only reaffirmed the Bush Doctrine, advocating further unprovoked aggression and imperial overstretch as mandated by his never-ending War on Terrorism. Distilling international diplomacy and domestic issues down to a mid-boggling degree, he simplified his pre-digested message to buzzwords like “freedom� and “democracy.� The President proceeded to piggy-back false inferences about the insurgency onto his patriotic premise, as if Americans are the only people entitled to defend their way of life.

Isn’t it okay for Iraqis or folks from other cultures to feel that the U.S., by design, mercilessly exploits the human condition for profit? May citizens of North Korea, Iran or other developing nations choose to reject the American way without incurring our military wrath? Or must they capitulate to the unchecked development of the global-warming, profits-before-people corporate steamroll which historians of the future will certainly one day cite as the cause of both the rise and the fall of the American Empire?

Why didn’t the media pundits who took to the airwaves in the wake of the broadcast call Bush on the carpet for his cultural chauvinism, after he once again arrogantly delivered such an insipid speech that was an insult to the intelligence? How could they let him get away with saying virtually nothing about New Orleans, as if FEMA’s still doing a heckuva job? And what sort of neo-plantation has this nation turned into when Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, was arrested and frog-hopped out of the Capitol prior to the speech just for wearing an anti-war t-shirt, when she was there as an invited guest of a Congresswoman?

The failure of the national news coverage to indict the State of the Union address’ absence of substance almost reflects a collusion to protect a morally-bankrupt administration. Somebody has to start asking the tough questions. About Iraq. About New Orleans. About an exit strategy, not just from the Middle East, but from the ghettoes all across this land.

How long can a corrupt President and Vice-President with absolute control of Congress and the Courts continue to try to stonewall us with Orwellian double-talk before the inevitable blowback which will arrive after everybody finally wises-up?

Black Star News columnist and Entertainment critic Williams is an attorney and a member of the bar in NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars.
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