Disaster, Waiting To Happen

Disaster, Waiting To Happen
By Tina Brown
Thursday, May 27, 2004; Page C01

It's not surprising the networks didn't air the president's speech on Monday. At last week's previews of the upcoming TV season, the big three revealed that they would cut back on summer reruns. And aside from the special-effects addition of blowing up Abu Ghraib prison, there were no more new ideas to be found in Bush's Iraq address than in an old episode of "The Bachelor."

Fortunately we had a new sitcom to talk about at the water cooler -- "Everybody Hates Ahmed," about a wily Iraqi named Ahmed Chalabi who pulls a rug out from under the world's biggest superpower. (The show that would have followed, "Sanchez," a military drama starring an up-and-coming Hispanic actor, has already been canceled.)

All the other Iraq debacles have been fiercely sad. The Chalabi Conundrum is one of escalating farce. He bamboozles all the hard men of the Bush junta into paying him millions for false information and installing him as our man in Iraq. Then he is accused of stealing real information and feeding it to the Iranians, and gets busted by either incensed Iraqis, George Tenet or maybe himself to grab some credibility with the Arab street. It has the deliciously wacky late colonial flavor of a novel by Evelyn Waugh.

Democrats have needed a legitimate reason for a belly laugh. For weeks there has been a growing, awestruck sense that the wheels are coming off the Bush reelection bus. But the news is too excruciating to provide any glee. There was that terrible day when the images competing on the TV screens were the shame of the Abu Ghraib hearings versus the pain of the 9/11 hearings versus the weeping scenes of street carnage in the bombing of Gaza. It's hard not to feel nostalgic for wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton and all the other super-size celebrity indecencies we could pretend to be shocked about. Who wouldn't want to go back to the time when "body parts" conjured up Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, the ancient history of four months ago?

...

A giddy, apocalyptic feeling now reigns in Democratic circles in New York. Giddy because Bush is sinking in the polls, and there's a sneaking sense that Kerry just might be able to pull it off. Apocalyptic because as the date for the Iraqi handover draws closer, the darkness of uncertainty and foreboding dampens even the adrenaline of partisan politics.

That's why it might seem strange that on Monday night conflicted Dems felt a sense of composure for the first time in weeks at a lecture at the Universalist church on Central Park West about how the world is likely to end. Stranger still that the person telling them about the impending disaster was the 43rd president of the United States -- or, rather, the man who this crowd believes rightfully earned that title: Al Gore.

(more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59145-2004May26.html