It feels like Sept. 10th, 2001

by phil on Monday Feb 21, 2005 2:06 PM

The cover of Slate today makes me feel like the "good ol days" of Condit-Britney-Spears
during the Clinton years.

We got:
- a main entry about an attempt to profit from QVC
- a baseball jock's obsession with steroids
- some he-said banter on gender by the Harvard president
- the philosophy of a lesbian show on Showtime
- and a discussion about the discussion on foxhunting in the UK.

I preferred the frivolous heyday of Clinton's era than this horror-and-terror parade since 9/11.

Peggy Noonan, an opinion writer for the Wall Street Journal, echoed similar desires a few months ago:

What I wrote about a few weeks ago was my fear that the American people have grown or are growing tired of the heightened drama of the times. Americans like drama in their lives--they like graduations and first jobs and prizes and the birth of a baby in the family; they like triathalons and great stories and local mysteries. They like movement and action on a personal level. But they do not want it on a historical level if they can avoid it. They don't want to send their sons, or daughters, off to war. They don't like that kind of excitement, or they don't like it for long. This is part of why we used to be called Isolationists. We weren't and aren't--we just have a bias for peace. Can that bias be overcome? Of course. Pearl Harbor overcame it. The Soviet desire to expand and impose communism overcame it. Sept. 11 did too. (Source)

On a separate note, I like how the phrase "Soviet desire to expand" makes our response seem so passive. I dunno, they had this desire disease kind of just crop up, and we had no choice but to inject the serum, my hands were tied sir.