If You Don't Study and Do Well in School...

I remember my brother and sister and I engaging in a game called, "Thbbbpp! Who Farted?!" The goal was to make the other person say, "I ate it." So when no one was expecting it, you'd blurt out, "Thbbppp {that's my written fart/raspberry noise} Who Farted?! I One it!" Then the unlucky second person would have no choice but to say, I Two it," followed by the other one who'd have to say, "I Three it." This continued until the poor shmo after "I Seven it" had to say, "I Eight it," to huge peals of laughter and loud derision. And no amount of pleading, "I didn't eat it! I didn't!" allowed you to renege on your statement. This was grade school justice, and you had eaten the fart, fart eater. After all, you said so, didn't you?

All of which brings me to my point: Thank god John Kerry has abandoned his Comedy Tour of Critical Congressional Races.

Obviously we all know what he meant. He used the term "intellectually lazy" immediately leading up to his big punchline. WE ALL KNOW who has been called "intellectually lazy" for, oh, about 7 years now, and it ain't the rank and file members of the U.S. armed services. It ain't the generals, and it ain't even Rumsfeld. WE ALL KNOW the person who, if you google "intellectually lazy" will probably have a few entries dedicated to him, or at least have several different people accusing him of that verbatim.

So let's stop with the refusal to acknowledge that he wasn't discussing the troops. That is not only intellectually lazy, it's intellectually dishonest. And maybe as a charitable act, we'll all throw you a bone and say that maybe Cheney's remark about "dunking" prisoners wasn't referring to waterboarding.

Or should we as an electorate allow the Rove Machine to reduce our public discourse to The Fart Eating Game? If we do, then we as citizens of a democracy, Republican AND Democrat, will indeed have eaten it.