I was actually thinking about giving the politics thing a rest as I'm trying to move in another direction, but spending seven incredibly mind-numbing hours listening to NPR tends to make one obsessed with the State of the Union. So, here we go.

First of all, the ex-Gov of New Jersey resigning because he had a gay affair? Wow. I mean, seriously, wow. See what happens when you let gay people marry? Gay guys who marry women and have kids because they're too ashamed of themselves for being gay will go out and have gay affairs. Won't somebody please think of the children?

Second of all, how about that? Maureen Dowd's kind of cute. What is it with snarky redheaded political columnists and are there any who are Jewish?

Okay, now onto the thing that has my panties all in a bunch. So our Vice-President, Grimli Wormtongue is getting a lot of play for his criticism of John Kerry's use of the word "sensitive" in describing how we should conduct our war on "terror." Strangely, a lot more attention than he's gotten for, say, bilking the US Government out of millions when he was running Halliburton and creating an offshore account to circumvent US laws against working with Iran. But I digress.

Anyways, Wormtongue appears to have scored a direct hit on Kerry, who for some reason is having a rough week because a bunch of people have been running ads accusing him of not getting injured more severely during 'Nam. Kerry wants to the US to be "sensitive"! What a wuss. How French! Doesn't he know we have a war going on and we have no time to be sensitive? There's no room for girly-men here. We need manly-man. How dare he suggest something other than just blowing some shit up?

With the blow landed, the yap-dogs started yapping. Fox News got their marching orders and spent most of their talk shows mocking Kerry for being a pussy. The non-Fox press also joined suit, bombarding him with questions about Wormtongue's attack and wondering if it will make him look as spineless as he sometimes can come off. Especially in light of the fact that it appears that his three injuries in the war might have possibly mere flesh wounds.

All of this sounds kind of bad in fact because let's be honest here, we are in the midst of a War on Something or other and being sensitive is not what we need to do. And as a candidate, Kerry does need to show strength.

Crazy little thing about that word "sensitive." If you go look it up in a dictionary, the second definition of the word, the one right above the wussy definition is this definition:

-Responsive to external conditions or stimulation.

Isn't that kind of what you want vis a vis a war on terror?

And according to the New Republic, there's also this definition-

2. Reacting readily to external agents or forces.

Again, that's pretty good.

But, of course, to understand all of that, you'd have to be half-way literate. Which rules out most of the country. It also puts Kerry in kind of a bind. He could try and argue that he meant the word sensitive a different kind of way than how it's being played by the Republicans but if he did that, he'd look kind of like a wussy nuancer who gets pissy about definitions. Saying something along the lines of "it depends on the what the definition of sensitive is" isn't going to work.

The Republicans now have Kerry in a box. He could just leave it alone and he's seen as not strong. He could try and argue against the charge but get tied up in definitions. All this because the Republicans got tricky on the definition of the word. Yet despite all that, it's Kerry who's looking bad.

Of course, there'd be a way out of this stupid little debate. The press could, instead of just repeating Cheney's stupid comment without comment and then go to some non-partisan like Newt Gingrich to explain what a girly man Kerry is, they could just say something like, "well, according to the dictionary, sensitive could also mean this…." You know, kind of actually doing their jobs and separating the lies from the truth. So far, only the New Republic seems to have noticed this.

Funny little story I read about the DNC. Apparently, Ted Koppel got all high and mighty at the Convention and during an interview with John Stewart, castigated Stewart for somehow besmirching the good name of journalism.

PS- I swear I wrote this before the "Daily Show" which spent about five minutes tearing Cheney a new asshole for his comments. Then showed that Bush pretty much said the same thing. What can I say? "Daily Show" 5,342-Mainstream Media 0.