Fooled Again

CW FISHER I was ill and it was hard to blog so I wrote an opera. When I returned to blogging, I came back different. Madder. I have never used the F word in my writing for reasons too fucking numerous to list, but suddenly I was working fistfuls of fucks between syllables and daring you, yeah you, to suck in advance my daily special in the event you disagreed -- all in the spirit of simply getting somebody's attention. I got hate mail, lost some friends but kept it up. And along the way I like to think I learned a few things. I discovered I'm not un-American after all, I'm anti-un-American, ashamed of us all, sickened that we're even discussing torture let alone enacting it into law after this big phony show by Sen. McCain yields a loss which is sold in the press as a gain for Highroad, America -- and we buy it because we don't frankly give a fuck if it's a fake to protect George Bush and the entire U.S. government against future allegations of war crimes, as if that'll work. And it will, of course, already has. Frankly. We're happy to simply believe we stood up for something. That We Made a Difference. McCain's got the time to make a cameo in The Wedding Crashers, and he's got time to make a cameo on The Senate Floor. Self promoting phony. Sadly, the brightest and bravest Americans, and there are only two of them, are both comedians. Bill Maher and Jon Stewart have just enough courage to scrabble up the hill and almost touch the monolith ..before running away giggling like monkeys. I understand their first job is to make us laugh, to see, like monkeys, that it's okay to touch the monolith, and then to do like monkeys -- only human beings are not monkeys, and Americans aren't even descended from them. Plus they don't give a fuck, they move on. I'm still standing at the side of the hole that swallowed a plane and vaporized 47 people but didn't singe the grass. I'm waiting for one honest man, or both, to come right out and say it: that the world is America's gitmo to be done with as a few people please. But maybe I expect too much of our comedians. I do not expect anything of the mainstream press since the death of journalism. I haven't seen a journalist since they were first embedded in 2001. Today's googlized news offers us the same three carefully placed paragraphs in 37 languages. We haven't noticed yet because, who scrolls? You don't scuba when you surf. Bill Clinton goes off on Chris Wallace last week -- and it's shocking. Shocking to finally hear the truth. It's even more shocking the next day when you see a small part of it out of context, punchline to a sendup by a newshour "host." Everything's shocking these days. That it took Clinton five years to speak out, that's shocking. You'd think all this shock would come at the expense of some awe, but no. I'm in shock, still, over 9-11, staring in holes. There's something fishy about two airplanes vaporizing on the same day, one in Pennsylvania, the other in the Pentagon. There's something fishy about not two but three towers spontaneously falling at the speed of gravity due to a fireball of office furniture. I don't need to hear the engineers' explanation or watch their animations -- because I can't get that far. I can't get past those disappeared planes. All those vaporized people. Where did they go? Were they ascended up into Heaven? You see. So I am stuck on a fundamental question. I am irritated by secondary questions, such as why the question fails to ignite much curiosity, but I am transfixed to the fundamental issue of vaporization and the transmogrification of matter, though I'm often reminded that that part of the parade has passed. It's like I see dead people. I've tried to talk to them but they appear intent on eating me. The only place I do not see dead people is in that hole in Shanksville. No plane, no paper, no people. I feel like poor Zapruder. Like it's gonna be a long parade before traffic starts moving again. I watch it in slo-mo but fast forward to the end. It's all a grassy knoll. Except for that hole. Oh, and that one too. And that one.