Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Short Cuts

I Won't Dance, Don't Ask Me: As we passed another tooth-pick-under-the-eyelid evening trying to watch an entire democrat debate, three things stood out. Some really major-league screaming from a few wack-job Lyndon LaRoucheys in the balcony that revealed each candidate's petulant side, Brit Hume's measured and pleasant manner (anyone else think he deserves the "Most Trusted Man in America" label?) and each candidate getting to coyly name their favorite song. We smell a set-up question but never mind. It will provide the only copy pundits will have to work with today. Here's the rather telling list.

New Meaning to Granny Bashing: French doctors have their stethoscopes in a twist over being blamed for - some reports say - 15,000 dead oldsters who were abandoned in 100 degree rooms while their physicians lolled on the Cote d'Azur. No one has yet questioned the most obvious reason for this unconscionable situation and that would be: How insane is it for an entire country to take a full month off in the first place?

Some Really, Really, Good News: Amid all the gnarly, awful, really bad news and depressing atmosphere of a week with September 11 in it comes this happy word - Opus is back! The best penguin in the world is to waddle on to the comic pages again with the return of Berkeley Breathed's 1980's strip "Bloom County." It will appear only on Sundays but that's good enough. Show it to your kids and tell them it's the Un-Doonesbury.

September 10th: In the next twenty-four hours we will be inundated with articles, columns and commentary concerning the terrible events of September 11 two years ago. We choose to focus on who we were two years ago on this day - the day before our world changed forever. That was the day we did not appreciate what resilient, tough, resolute people Americans are. Now we do. Hold that lesson close, for it will sustain us. We must never give up, never give in, never buckle or weaken. Good and decent people will prevail. God bless America. God bless those who lead us. You know who they are.

-Your LComStaff