Happy Christmas (War is Over): Where are the Fireworks?

      To paraphrase John Lennon, “so this is Christmas and what have we done?”  Hey, we’re out of Iraq.  Well, our troops are out of there.  Yeah, I know we’ll have some type of ‘presence’ there, whether diplomatic or military or a mix, but we’re officially out.  Getting into the Iraq ‘Mess O’ Potamia’ as Jon Stewart called it was the second biggest
American news story of the last decade and, if it weren’t for Wikipedia, I wouldn’t have known a thing about our getting out.  What gives?  I bet those troops’ families are overjoyed and proud of the service their loved ones have given this country.  We can’t honor their contributions with a TV music special, though we have one for every time a Christmas tree gets stuck up in a public place or a country music or teen star needs to hawk some phlegm or a Holiday album?  Here’s hoping Comedy Central, Bravo, and VH1 put together a comedy/music special in the next couple of months since all of them have stars who’ve followed in the tradition of Bob Hope by realizing that entertaining the troops overseas is the highest value of American pop culture.

      Kim Jong-il is dead.  Yep, and neither the CIA nor the Seals nor the Rangers killed him.  And we’re not a little gladdened by this?  Where are the Fireworks?  Things may not get better immediately for the North Koreans, but I bet Hillary Clinton is already working out a diplomatic plan to try to neutralize their complete enmity of anything western.  

      New Year’s Wish:  Everyone (especially The Swedish Academy with its annual ritual of PPP – pop patronizing profundity known as The Nobel Prize) will realize that Hillary Clinton is the most effective U.S. Secretary of State since Henry Kissinger.  People may not agree with what they have done and how they have done it but, in two very different historical periods, they kept the West and the rest of the world safer than they found it.