THIS MODERN WORLD

I was away for the weekend and now I’ve got a cartoon to write. Everyone else with keys to the site is either on vacation or laying low. Bear with us, we’re on a reduced summertime schedule here at thismodernworld.com.

Apparently a guest on Fox News has suggested that the innocent man shot by London police may have been an al Qaeda decoy:

IT WOULDN’T BE OUT OF THE QUESTION FOR THEM TO PICK ON SOMEONE WHO MAY NOT BE MIDDLE EASTERN BUT WHO MAY LOOK MIDDLE EASTERN. SAY, SOMEONE WHO IS FROM SOUTH AMERICA, SOMEONE WHO IS FROM CENTRAL AMERICA, AND, SAY, YOU KNOW, WE KNOW THEY’RE RACIAL PROFILING US, SO WE’RE GOING TO TRY TO GET SOME PUBLIC OPINION ON OUR SIDE. LET’S DRESS THIS GUY UP, TELL HIM TO ACT SUSPICIOUS, AND IF THE POLICE APPROACH HIM, TELL HIM TO RUN AWAY, AND WHEN THE POLICE CATCH HIM, THEN HE APPEARS TO BE INNOCENT, SO, YOU KNOW, IN ESSENCE, THEY START SENDING OUT DECOYS. THEY CAN DO ALL KIND OF THINGS WHEN THEY KNOW THAT YOUR NET — THAT YOU HAVE CAST A NET THAT’S THAT NARROW.

(Via Atrios.) There are times when I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe next someone will suggest that the taxi driver known only as Dilawar tortured himself to death, to make the U.S. look bad.

In response to my call below for peculiar and perverse products, several readers have suggested the forthcoming comic — and guaranteed instant camp classic — Liberality:

It is 2021, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11 It is up to an underground group of bio-mechanically enhanced conservatives led by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North to thwart Ambassador Usama Bin Laden’s plans to nuke New York City …And wake the world from an Orwellian nightmare of United Nations- dominated ultra-liberalism.

Don’t miss the complete synopsis, which reads like Jonah Goldberg channelling Ed Wood. Coulter laws! Vice President Michael Moore! The Department of Political Correctness! Oh, the hilarity!

I myself can hardly wait.

Occasionally someone needs to:

You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush’s favorites, the need to fight the terrorists “over there” so we won’t have to fight them here at home.

All the rationales have to genuflect before “The Prize,” which was the title of Mr. Yergin’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.

It’s the oil, stupid.

What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990’s.

Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the neoconservatives’ sights. The neocons envisaged U.S. control of the region (and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the beginning.

You’d think it would be difficult to argue with the paper trail the neo’s themselves left behind, pre-9/11, but the pro-war types always have a thoughtful rejoinder at hand — i.e., typing the word “oil” in all caps, repeating each letter multiple times. It’s one of the automatic reflexes that passes for thought on that side of the ideological divide.

Remember the end of the movie “Titanic,” where the ship upended in the water and the passengers slid down the length of the deck to an icy death in the water below?

Well now you can relive the fun and excitement with your very own Titanic water slide!

(Photo via spam from a Chinese manufacturer of inflatable kiddy rides.)

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I’m thinking that this should be a regular feature, so feel free to submit your own perverse products…

Update: apparently the Titanic water slide is old news to a lot of people. What can I say? Until last year, I was living in Brooklyn — didn’t make it to a lot of water parks or state fairs…