The Daily Drool

Rebirth

Wednesday night the bombs started dropping. I had a date with my friend Alaka to make some dinner, maybe watch a movie, maybe head out to a club for some mid-week dancing. When she arrived at my aparment the corners of her eyes spoke of drying tears. We alternated between sitting and pacing, giggling nervously and staring into space. We resisted turning on the television, in part wanting to avoid the truth of the evening, in part to avoid the lies we knew we would see in the media. In the end we caved and turned on the TV.

My hope was that PBS would have some humane coverage of the war, or perhaps some commentary. Maybe they might just have Joseph Campbell sharing words of wisdom from the traditions of the world, some solace and transcendence in this moment of desperate confusion. Instead there were chimpanzees, swinging through the forest with the voice of Jane Goodall carefully narrating their movements. I could only laugh, because PBS held the same thing every other channel did that night: apes beating their chests, preparing for war.

Our next stop was C-SPAN. There we found a call-in opinion show that just had people voicing their opinions for about thirty seconds at a time. There was a Gulf War veteran apologizing for not taking out Saddam the first time and supporting his comrades in arms. Someone who had been to Viet Nam was not so enthusiastic, saying he dismissed the war as an imperial and misguided action. One man said that we should wipe Iraq off the map for what they did to us on September 11th. They alternated this way, some voices angry, some evangelical, others tenuous and afraid. I tried calling in but the line was busy. Eventually I couldn