Play It Backward

A headline in the comic weekly Onion reads, "Homosexual Admits to Being Governor of New Jersey." And you know, all the news sounds as if it’s being played backward. Here’s Bush proposing to bring some troops home–and Kerry saying that’s reckless. Here’s a key Republican in the House saying he wouldn’t have voted for the war if he knew what he knows now, and here’s Kerry saying HE would have — and what’s more, if he’s elected, he may send MORE troops to Iraq.

You’d think the Republicans would want to forget about Vietnam, but they’re making an uproar over Kerry’s record there. They say five medals are too many. Somebody asked Dick Cheney about his five draft deferments. He said he had other priorities. And guess who got the bigger hand from the Veterans of Foreign Wars?

Play the reel backward.

We’re on high alert for a terrorist attack here, so the FBI and the police are going around taking names of pacifists. They say Ted Kennedy turned up on a no-fly list. He got aboard but a lot of grandmas have run into trouble at airports.

Our mayor is terribly concerned about the damage they might do to the grass, especially when the Republicans come to town. He offers us a discoiunt on admission to the zoo if we behave.

And talk about reeling backward, the Times replaced the great Barbara Eherenreich from her guest spot on the Op-Ed page and turned it over to one Dahlia Lithwick–who claims to be a Democrat and says we lose votes by making fun of George Dubya. DailyHowlerdtotcom takes her column apart today in a most entertaining way. Yes, we can laugh at the news, if we reel it backward.

JOHN L. HESS is a former writer for the New York Times, a career he chronicles in his excellent new book My Times: a Memoir of Dissent. Hess is now a political commentator for WBAI.