As Pure An Example Of Shark-Jumping As One Could Ever Hope For

Yes, I realize there is a dangling preposition in the title of this post. But there are more important things afoot. Like the fact that the president just won a Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not sure whether that means that he has jumped the shark or that the Nobel committee has jumped the shark, but I'm pretty sure I just saw a shadow flit across a dorsal fin, and so we can deduce that someone or something has, indeed, vaulted over it.

In a world where reasonable political discourse is the norm, this would be c-c-c-craaaazy stuff, but we don't live in such a world. We live in a world where Sarah Palin is considered to be a viable candidate for public office, and where people straight-facedly call the Fox channel "news," and where people who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that the Congress' current healthcare reform bill contains "death panels" are considered serious analysts whose opinions on the subject of the day, which is often somehow Britney Spears-related (gah!), are to be carefully weighed before coming to any important conclusions about the state of the union.

So, in light of these things and others, I am going to attempt to help you help me get a grasp on the relative weirdness of this morning's central revelation through an intellectual exercise based around the following question:

{ahem}

Is the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama more or less shocking and embarrassing than the fact that his predecessor authorized and carried out a program of torturing civilians in secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe?

What's Past Is Prologue. Also, It's Plausibly Deniable.

FEMA held a press conference whereat there was no press, on account of the thing being called at the last minute, etc. FEMA dealt with this particular emergency by providing its own employees to stand in for the press, and lob softballs at the podium with reckless abandon.

Our lovely new White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, true to form, could not just say "That's embarrassing, here's how it happened, we apologize." Oh no. Not Dana. She's a professional. She had to overextend and say (wait for it) "It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it."

Ahhhh Dana. Really? The White House wouldn't hold a public event and pack the audience with shills? Really? The White House wouldn't do that? They wouldn't call press conferences with no warning? The White House wouldn't screen attendance to ensure only the underhand pitchers get through?

Are you absolutely sure of that?

The Prayers and Tears of Jesus Quintana

Buying a house introduces you to all sorts of strange new things and concerns. The most unexpectedly entertaining of these is this. It's safe for work, yes, but as you will discover, it is also undeniably pornographic. It is sick and prurient and disturbing and dangerous and so fascinating that whole hours of your life will disappear into it, never to return. Because, as you will learn, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

The relationship between the unencompassable variety of human sexual desires and the law has never been an easy one, and the line between the harmless pervert and the sex criminal is blurry and ever-shifting, but the penalty for those discovered to be on the wrong side of the line is absolute and unwavering. These men (and I have yet to find a woman on the list, although there must be some) are now at odds with their society. The difference between the guy who bedded a 17-year-old with a fake ID and the serial child rapist is erased by the common designation of "sex offender." Everybody goes on the list. Everyone gets his picture on the internet. Every alias is held up for scrutiny. They have been paraded in shame through the town square, and every public encounter they have is haunted by the same question: "Recognize me?"

The closest one to my house is two or three blocks. We call him "The Todd" because humor, as Gene will tell you, is how people come to grips with the things that disturb us. The Todd, in his photograph, sports the same basic demeanor as Khaled Sheikh Mohammed did, upon being awakened by the United States Special Forces sometime before dawn, with nought but a wifebeater and a Selleck-worthy moustache'n'chest-hair combo (perhaps he was at a costume party the night before?) to protect him. But where KSM sports the disgruntlement of a freshly-bathed tabby, The Todd evinces the pleading desperation of a man for whom the crime was quick and the penalty slow. In his eyes is reflected the future, dark and inexorable as a storm at sea, with every thought and movement tied directly back to the horrible act that led him to be in front of that camera.

Browsing through the kid-touchers, wife-beaters, father-rapers, and uncategorizably disturbed folks who live in my neighborhood (what are "crimes against nature?"), I found myself judging the pervs not by the nature of their crimes, but by the emotions signalled by their mugshots. Some were visibly angry, some were smugly contemptuous, some were stone-faced, and some, like The Todd, were sadly bewildered, adrift in the wake of their own loss of self-control. These men are wreckers of lives, perpetrators of horror, somebody somewhere's personal demon and tormentor, but that last group are wrecked and tormented themselves. The forced isolation of prison would be a relief for these men, because every glance, every meeting, every job application or knock at the door brings the same apprehension, the fear of the Knowing Look. It's a peculiarly cruel punishment for a peculiarly cruel crime, and once you look up your address in the database, you'll be qualified to mete it out.