froth and leering

[Dan Scanlan <dscanlan@xxxxxxx>]

Bush's disturbing sleeping disorder

By Hunter S. Thompson

The national news was crowded with big stories this week, and most of
them turned out to be somehow joined at the hip with major league
Sports -- especially Football and its sinister connections with
tainted money and naked women. It was shocking.

"This is horrible news," I said to Anita, as Janet Jackson's tortured
right nipple was rubbed in our face for the 55th time in three days.
"Nobody remembers the final score in Houston, but we ALL witnessed
the shameless quasi-naked sight of that breast and S&M-style nipple
shield."

More evidence that the President may be losing the fight. It was like
having football and porno all at once, with no holds barred ... Or
that's what they said on TV, anyway. CBS News Wizard Ed Bradley
called it a magic moment for show business.

But not in the White House. George Bush went out of his way to
announce formally that he went to sleep long before the end of the
first half.

What kind of all-American boy would say a stupid thing like that
while he's running for re-election? Only a fool would deliberately
insult the whole Football Nation, at a nervous time when polls show
his Job Approval Rating plunging below 50 percent for the first time
since he took office in January of 2001. That is like stabbing
yourself in the back while you're preparing to fight for your life on
a street corner. It is dumb, and so is the dingbat who told Bush to
say it.

Many things are disturbing these days. We live in ugly times, and
some people and institutions are losing their grip. The list is long,
from Janet Jackson to Howard Dean to the city of Boston and the
disgusting sex scandal at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Some people got rich from it all, but not many. A-Rod and the Yankees
were big winners, along with George Steinbrenner; and the surging
Presidential ambitions of Mass. Sen. John Kerry, who already leads
George Bush (the younger) in most Presidential polls. And this is
only the middle of February. We still have six months to kill before
Election Day, and that is a lifetime in a business where the
difference between living and dying is usually a matter of hours.

This is no time for the "leader of the free world" to be falling
asleep at massively-popular sporting events. He is already trailing
heavily in polls among football fans and young males who would do
anything to see a naked female nipple during halftime at the Super
Bowl.

That is a hell of a lot of eligible voters to insult when your
chances of living in the White House this time next year are less
than 50-50.

Was he drunk? Does he fear the sight of an uncovered nipple? Was he
lying? Does he believe in his heart that there are more evangelical
Christians in this country than football fans and sex-crazed yoyos
with unstable minds? Is he really as dumb as he looks and acts?

These are all unsatisfactory questions at a time like this. Is it
possible that he has already abandoned all hope of getting
re-elected? Or does he plan to cancel the Election altogether by
declaring a national military emergency with terrorists closing in
from all sides, leaving him with no choice but to launch a huge bomb
immediately?

All these things are possible, unfortunately, in a White House that
is drowning in it's own failures. Desperate men do desperate things,
and stupid men do stupid things. We are in for a desperately stupid
summer.

But so what? March Madness is just around the corner; and after that
comes the Stanley Cup and the long-running NBA playoffs. It's really
not so bad at all, is it.