I finally saw the big video, the one that everyone's talking about and endlessly discussing, the most hyped appearance on camera since Paris Hilton put the night vision on a camcorder: Bush on "Meet the Press." I actually, in a strange way, kind of felt sorry for him. Total puppet trying to do something without the puppet masters behind him. It was kind of like when the Monkees decided they could write and play their own songs, except who doesn't love the Monkees? The main impression I got, though was of someone so cut-off from reality, so surrounded by sycophants and lackeys, so caught in the bubble, that he's clearly lost touch with reality. Seriously, I actually don't think he thinks he's lying.

Anyways, it looks like the dirt is starting to fly John Kerry's way. The National Enquirer had a way nasty piece on him in this week's issue after someone at the RNC probably handed over their Ops folder. And then there's the other side of his Vietnam experience. He's been keeping it pretty low-key these days, but Kerry did become a huge Vietnam War protestor, even helping start a group called "Vietnam Veterans Against the War," feat that got himself on Nixon's enemies list (which should make him A-OK in anyone's books). He famously spoke out against the war and threw what turned out to be someone else's medals into Arlington cemetery in protest. He was so famous as a protestor, in fact, that he was in Doonesbury cartoons in '71.

Now, of course, the yap dags on the Right are trying to use what Kerry said and did as a protestor against him, using the usual crap about how his speaking out was unpatriotic, un-American, blah, blah, blah. They're even bringing out the old war-horse "Hanoi Jane" references just to get the ole juices boiling, even though most people associate Jane Fonda these days with "Barbarella" and workout videos. Even worse, because he did accuse some soldiers in the war of not doing not-so-very nice things to the Vietnamese, he is now being taken to task for saying something he had no right to say considering he actually fought there and saw it. It is, after all, so much easier to impugn someone of their patriotism for saying something about the war when you were busy skiing in Vermont or doing wads of blow at Texas social functions.

All of this is going to be a big, huge deal and it only fills me with dread. No, not necessarily because it'll make Kerry look bad (which it will) but only because once again, we're going to be fighting over the 60's. Just what the world needed- more self-indulgent, narcissist spit-ball fighting between Baby Boomers. The 60's were more than forty years ago. Get over it. Haven't we been Big Chilled enough? Isn't it enough that they're about to completely bankrupt all of our entitlement programs?

But what'll happen to Gen-X when we finally achieve that pinnacle of leadership? What great debates will we have? What issues will come to haunt us forty years later? Cause, you know, we really had nothing. No big conflicts, no big debates, not one single huge experience we could call our own except for the launching of MTV.

Will someday a campaign spat occur over the whole East Coast/West Coast thing? (At a press conference, Sen. Lumpkin accused Sen. Moody of not keeping it real back in the day and said, quote, "how can you trust anyone who preferred Biggie Smalls over the dope fat, rhymes of Tupac? Tupac was whack, yo.")

Will we revisit the great Indie Wars of the early 90's? Will we have constant repeats of the great Hipster vs. Yuppie debate that marked the SF Mayoral Election? ("Sen. Umbridge denied he wore a mullet in High School and said that while the photo of him clearly shows him wearing one, he only wore it ironically. He also said that he did not listen to Bon Jovi and that he only went to the concert because his girlfriend wanted him to. To support his claims, he pulled out an old album copy of the Cure's 'Staring at the Sea: The Singles which he said he owned back in High School. He also accused Sen. Snape of not being into Nirvana until after Nevermind came out and called him a poseur.")