...to provide evidence that Americans don't like exceptional people.

Turn on the tv. That's the closest look at the American mind that you'll ever get. And the one thing you see all through tv is sameness, sameness, sameness. All the actors look alike. All the tv shows look alike. All the news shows look alike. All the news achors look alike. All the late night talk shows look alike. Even the reruns look like, because all of them appear to be "Cheers" or "Seinfeld" or "Everybody Loves Raymond." And the reruns are shown every single night and every single day, year after year after year after year.

And tv is more the same now than it was ten or twenty or thirty years ago. We don't have 'specials' anymore. We don't have variety shows anymore. We don't have miniseries anymore. We don't have guest hosts anymore. We don't have documentaries anymore. We don't have one hour news reports anymore. We don't have town hall meetings anymore. We don't even have 'kids hour' anymore.

In short, we don't want to see anything on tv that could stand out or be exceptional. We only want to see what we've seen before. we don't want to see anything different. We don't want to see talented people, or challenging people, or interesting people, or questioning people, or doubtful people. We just want to see Jessica Simpson or Howie Mandel. We want to see the phoney rednecks on "Jerry Springer" so that we can feel superior to somebody. And we want to see it five days a week, 52 weeks a year, for at least 16 years, because that's how long the "Jerry Springer" show has been on.

We're terrified of the new. We're terrified that our news people might show bias. We're terrified that our politicians might do or say odd things: like wear earth tones, or scream at the wrong time, or actually be policy wonks. We're terrified that we'll be caught listening to the wrong music, or found wearing the wrong clothes, or that our teeth won't glow brightly enough in the dark, or that our cars won't be big enough the kill the other people in a crash instead of us.

This is America, land of the perpetual adolescent. And Bush is chief adolscent. He's a dumb, spoiled, smart ass punk who doesn't give a shit. All he knows is that his daddy gave him the big car to drive and he thinks he can drive it as fast as he wants while giving the finger to the cops. The world is just George Bush's personal high school and in that regard he's very much like most Americans.

BTW, didn't "Cassius Clay" change his name a while back?

...plus any documents that might show "pictures of the witnesses

Sounds pretty kinky.

...is in his last throes.

...so they cut Al Gore down and built up George Bush. Since the disparity between Gore and Bush was so huge, they basically had to destroy Al Gore to make Bush look passable.

Yes, the press is insane and so is the country.

I wish to God the American left would come out against Oprah. She is selling the same right wing shit that the Republicans are, only more insidiously and more effectively.

The indentification of Bush with Oprah is spot on. Note that Bush and Cheney are desperately trying to apply the principles of "The Secret" to the Iraq war. They think that all we need to do to win the war is think positively and reject negative thoughts. Hence the effort to shout down critics of the war by calling them 'traitors.' Hence also the lack of planning, taxes, a draft, even a rationale for the war--all of these would involve 'negative' thoughts.

The Iraq war is being fought practically by General Oprah and no wonder it is a such a disaster.

It means wishing will make it so. It's juvenile and adolescent. It's what got us into Iraq and what keeps us there getting killed. Positive thinking is why we don't have a universal health care program or a sensible policy for conserving energy or good schools in our poorest neighborhoods. We just think everything is going to turn out alright all by themselves. We think that the free market or God or our innate goodness will somehow take care of us. But it never works that way.

Lincoln wasn't a positive thinker. Jesus wasn't a positive thinker. Einstein wasn't a positive thinker. Sucessful people who accomplish things worry and struggle and sweat and strive. They question, they doubt, and they fear. They rethink, doublecheck, and plan for undesireable outcomes. They work hard and NEVER think things will just turn out OK.

Look at Bush, who doesn't sweat anything, worry about anything, doubt anything or question anything. He's an absolute flop, the worst president in history. He may be 'successful' in that he's president, but otherwise he's just a joke. In terms of accomplishment, he's a failure and will never be otherwise. He lost the surplus, he lost New Orleans, and he's lost Iraq. This is what the power of positive thinking did for George Bush.