Musings on recent happenings...

I haven't blogged in a while... too many things going on, and nothing terribly interesting to say, I guess... but I've been away long enough...

Anna Nicole Smith... sweet Lord... a Florida appeals court has finally lifted the stay (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17379805/) that was preventing the guarian ad litem for her daughter from burying her, finally, next to her son, in the Bahamas. With all the silliness that has ensued since her death (not unlike a lot of the silliness that surrounded her life), the thing that struck me is how little everybody -- except, interestingly, Howard K. Stern -- seemed to care about her wishes, what was best for her daughter, and so on. Her mother was especially galling, from my perspective. A true mother would not question, for a New York minute, her daughter's desire to be buried beside her son, in the place where she had chosen to make a new life... In fact, this whole circus has been about garnering advantage, and, ultimately, access to her estate...what a sad, sad state of affairs, and what absolutely shameful behavior by her mother!

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. ... I suspect that most of the folks who have been so thoroughly absorbed in the Anna Nicole story don't even know who Schlesinger is (was) (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17392935/?s). He was a Camelot insider...one of the mythic people who were part of a mythic time in American history, and he was one of its most learned chroniclers. It amazes me, always, how little appetite we have in this country for history, ours or anybody else's, so it's no great surprise that Schlesinger was not more of a rock star, outside of a certain group...

Iraq... more and more Americans are dying, and yet Bush and Cheney continue doggedly down the same path, doing the same things that have proven over and over again to not work... all this while nearly 90% of National Guard units don't have the equipment they need (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17390852/), the Taliban are re-emergent in Afghanistan (you know, the place where Osama bin Laden is still at large, where the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 are holed up... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10624157), and those brave young boys and girls who are leaving arms and legs and the innocence of their youth behind forever are being rewarded by a grateful government with decrepit accomodations shared with rats while they recover their physical and mental faculties (and, as usual for this administration, a scapegoat's been identified and fired, as though he was single-handedly responsible... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10624157).

Why do I increasingly get the feeling that we're living in the latter days of a modern Roman empire?