Mom & Apple Pie

The flag-waving has begun, if it ever stopped:

After so many years of fear and loathing, we had almost forgotten what it's like to feel good about our country. On Thursday night, that long-dormant emotion came rushing back, like an old dream that pops out of the deepest recesses of memory, suddenly as clear as light. "They said this day would never come," said Barack Obama, and yet here, right before us, was indisputable evidence that it had.

That's the red-white-and-blue lede in Frank Rich's column this morning, as though Obamarama-cum-Huckababy could flush the BananaRepublic down the drain with, he adds, a "palpable sense that our history was turning a page whether or not Mr. Obama or his doppelgänger in improbability, Mike Huckabee, end up in the White House."

Please, Frank. Cut the bullshit. The winds of change don't smell all that good. Just read what George McGovern says this morning about impeaching the Bullshitter-in-Chief and Attack Dog, the chief's partner in high crimes and misdemeanors. Or have a look at Norman O. Mustill's collage, above. Maybe it will pop the nightmare instead of the dream "out of the deepest recesses of memory."

For all your shiny prose, dear Frank, and all your anti-establishment chest-thumping about the willful Beltway stupidity of mainstream political journalism -- as though a polished reference to "fear and loathing" could channel Hunter S. Thompson -- your column sounds a helluva lot like that old-time religion.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)