Politicized America…

Watching all these new fake news shows on Comedy Central, and listening to friends and colleagues talk about such and such segments, ie. Stephen Cobert on the US-Mexican border with the Minute Men, the faux investigation into the quail farm where Cheney shot his lawyer friend in the face, John Stewart taking on Fox news, and so on – one gets a feeling that America is becoming a bit like Europe – where political talks is the now a norm, a dialogue of the day – and is accepted as entertainment.

It wasn’t always that way, so it seems to me. I can recall a time when the water cooler talk was all sports and entertainment. Once in a while, a Monica Lewinski scandal inspired us for chit chat, and the topic to the White House would find its way into the dinner conversation and so on, but well, most of the time, politics was boring before 9-11.

Not anymore.

There’s a new atmosphere –I can’t quite put my finger on it – in which reference point to Muqtada al sadr or a joke about Tora Bora can get folks laughing. While international news is still inadequately reported in the mainstream press, events overseas have serious repercussions in America and we now know it on a very visceral level. The world is becoming a reality on the ground level, we feel it in our bones.

And that is where it counts. We’re not isolated anymore.

Perhaps in another generation and teenagers will be talking international politics at cafes,reading newspapers, especially if a draft is enacted.