Are we done talking about Osama yet?
No?
Okay, I can understand that. This is a big moment in American history, and it’s pretty much the only absolute, black-and-white victory we’re going to get out of the War on Terror. Maybe when (if) the last of our troops come home from Afghanistan, we can all eat an extra bowl of Cherry Garcia in celebration. But let’s face it: this is America. We’re going to do that anyway.
Some budding ethicists have already begun to question our nation’s collective grave-dancing at the news of Osama’s death, and this is very noble and poignant and all, but I’m not sure what these folks would suggest as an alternative. Perhaps if this were Sweden, we all could have sighed melancholily, gazed out the nearest window, and quietly reflected on the nuanced, questionable triumph of yet another human being sent to his violent death. But again: this is America. We are going to get drunk and throw confetti and party in front of the White House, and if you don’t like it, you hate our freedom.
But all of that was three days ago. Now it’s Wednesday and we’re all nursing bloodlust hangovers and getting used to talking about a “post-Osama world,” which, as I understand it, is the same as a non-post-Osama world except with one additional mummified Playboy model.
What, you didn’t hear? That’s right: on Tuesday, former Playmate-of-the-Month and B-movie actress Yvette Vickers was found dead in her home, where her corpse had lain undisturbed for untold months. According to her neighbor, who decided to investigate after not seeing Vickers leave the house for a year, Vickers’ remains were “unrecognizable.”
This is really disheartening news for those of us who had hoped we might achieve some measure of immortality through pulchritude. When Keats declared that “beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” he was clearly not taking into account the possibility that ye might end up a mummified corpse on the floor of a decrepit Beverly Hills McMansion.
Anyway, Ms. Vickers’ domicile decomposition might not be as big news as the murder of Public Enemy Number One, but it’s the best we’re going to get until Donald Trump gets too close to a flame and melts or the RNC finally figures out a way to resurrect Ronald Reagan.
Oh, and Republicans inserted “forcible rape” into their cherished anti-choice bill again. Oops! No one is exactly sure how or why or when this happened--perhaps while President Obama was overseeing the operation of a terrorist mastermind’s extermination--but it did, and everyone is finding it a little difficult to get all up in arms about it again. Honestly by this point it's hard to act surprised that Boehner and co. are able to rustle up a few hundred Republicans who hate women enough to deny them basic bodily autonomy.
But wait: Canada! Were you too busy lighting assassination celebration sparklers to hear about that? Canada had an election! And according to the Los Angeles Times, it was “surprisingly interesting”! It seems while we were trying to figure out which public figure truly crossed the line on the Bin Laden stuff (answer: Glenn Beck, shockingly), Canadians were marching to the polls in order to give Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party its long-sought majority.
This was a big deal, although the fact that it was a big deal was really an even bigger deal. The American press felt the need to note in virtually every story that Canadian elections are usually mind-numbingly dull, and that even Canadians are “mostly bored by their politics.” But all that changed on Monday when Conservatives took full control and the socialist New Democrats earned enough seats in Parliament to become the official opposition. This gives Canadian politics a two-party vibe, and means that their government will be enough like ours for us to vaguely understand it when it does something exciting, which, after Monday, will be never.
Of course, no politicians in Canada are trying to deny the existence of non-violent rape, which alone is enough to prove that they will never be American-y enough for us to truly comprehend them. Plus, Canadian Conservatives are actually most analogous to what Americans call moderate Democrats, so the three Republicans who follow Canadian politics will be sorely disappointed when the country doesn’t take a hard swing to the right. (American Republicans, by the way, are most equivalent to what Canadians call “neo-Nazis.”)
So maybe things are a little calmer in Canada. Maybe if the Canadian government caught and killed Canada’s Public Enemy Number One (Quebec?), people wouldn’t be dancing in the streets and cheering in their living rooms and eating lots of extra celebratory food. And maybe that’s more logical and sane and humane and respectful. But it’s also way more boring.
And for all our bloodlust and misogyny and decomposing Playmates, there is one thing America will never be: boring. Isn’t that alone something to celebrate?