Sunday, December 18, 2011

Alas— No Hoopla

My wife and I went downtown last Thursday to join the celebration. The Iraq War had ended, and I remembered the iconic photo in Life magazine taken on the day World War II ended— that classic image of the sailor kissing the nurse. I missed the end of WWII (actually I didn’t exactly miss it, but I was only three years old at the time) so I wanted to experience all the celebration-of-victory hoopla for myself this time. Alas— no hoopla. Maybe because there was no actual victory. Covered incessantly by the media with “imbedded” camera crews, Iraq just turned out to be a really, REALLY expensive, long-running and mindless reality show in which viewers eventually lost interest, so that the show finally got canceled because of low ratings. It will be interesting to see what they come up with to fill that time slot.