Look, Ma! No Nukes!

At my local video store last night I was going to buy Daddy's Dyin', Who's Got The Will? on special... special Price DVD. I looked to see what extras it had, and it only had the theatrical trailer. No thanks! What about that music video they did? Could no one find it, or was it just tied up in ribbon after ribbon of copyright red tape? For shame, MGM! Or whichever studio is responsible. Oh, why did Judge Reinhold have to go and grow up? I was a little freaked out because they show movies on a TV just for their customers, and they were showing something I had just checked out two days previous: the DVD of John Carpenter's They Live! Guess I feel a little flattered about that.
Anyway, speaking of being freaked out, Dubya's once again freaking out the whole world, this time by threatening to use nukes on Iran. You know, just like in the Bible! For Dubya and his ilk, it's not just a question of when, but why not today? Right now? (warning: proselytizing ahead, grandstanding, soapboxing... turn back now!)
See, because it's all about TV moments with these guys. Reagan saying "Tear down this wall", Nixon saying "We just have different ideas about achieving those goals...", McCarthy saying "And if there's one Communist in this government, THAT'S STILL ONE COMMUNIST TOO MANY!" Bush Sr. saying "Read my lips..." Wait, scratch that last one.
It's also all about using the TV to stir public support, scare us shirtless, whatever. If only that darn pesky liberal media didn't slow things down by showing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, what have you. That's why they're liberal. They didn't call it the Freedom Flood.
Me, myself, I tend to romanticize the U.S. and think of it in terms of a body. You know, freeways are arteries, roads are capillaries, cars being the blood cells. That kind of thing. So, in this analogy, the nerve center through the ages has changed, from telegraphs and a loose affiliation of newspapers. I like to think of the Postal Service as the nation's thoracic duct, if youwill; that's called a Shout Out to my peeps, that's what that is! Anyway, so from telegraphs to newspapers to Newsreels shown in movie theaters, and now TV and the internet being the dominant forces. Furthermore, the idea that ideas can be like viruses and bacterial infections that we need antidotes for. It took us a while to shake off the idea of Schwarzenegger for President, but this whole Iran thing has a more sneaky appeal, and a more urgent need for antidotes. I am kinda curious what Orrin Hatch thinks of all this, but who cares. He seems to like all crazy ideas anyway, no matter how crazy they are. ...Oh, I thought he was in Dave! Nah, just Traffic.
So, for the sake of Dubya's pride, we need to change the old proverb to a new one: if a nuclear bomb falls in the desert and no one on TV hears about it, does it really exist? Just as long as it doesn't hit the oil fields, I guess not. On Air America radio, I think it was Norm Ornstein saying that it's unprecedented for ex-Military brass to speak out in public, as there is this respect that the Military have for civilian leadership. Well, this is indeed now become the era of Questioning Everything, and it seems to me that Dubya is hell bent on taking all those things that were unprecedented, and making them so. Kinda makes you long for the sitting ducks of Yesteryear, huh?