That's a nice term I saw coined by Ted Rall in <a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=127&e=7&u=/020905/7/26svs.html">If You Have Dignity, the Terrorists Have Won</a> on <a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com">Yahoo News</a>. It's an opinion piece which covers the dread with which you should be approaching this day quite nicely. <bq>Are you the kind of person who believes that attaching a plastic American flag to your SUV makes a major patriotic statement? ... Don't get the rest of us wrong. We love America too. But we are understandably tense as we approach what is likely to be the greatest orgy of cheesy sentimentality, naked political opportunism and rank corporate necrophilia in this country's history. Well before the millennium, we Americans had already created a consumer and political culture so simultaneously compelling and appalling that other people wanted to kill us. To that tawdry tradition add the self-pity, sanctimoniousness and self-congratulations that have characterized the last year, filter them through the cynical minds of a fiendish array of politicians and corporate marketers looking to capitalize on the television event of the century, and we're set for a world class schmaltzfest. ... By the end of 9-11-02, you may wish Osama had killed you.</bq> Not much to add there; that pretty much covers it. And I pity you if you're unfortunate enough to have to see <iq>Generalissimo El Busho</iq>'s simpering face at any one of the three locations from which he'll be delivering speeches today. In which I'm sure he'll be thinking the whole time that he's the speech-making equivalent of Lincoln or Kennedy or whoever, while all the time saying things that don't have any connection to what he actually <i>does</i>. And, seriously, you may just want to stay away from the television entirely today if you value your sanity. You'll get loads of Americana, saturated in commercials and corporate sponsoring (they just want to show their support), mixed with hideously misplaced foreign policies, and a healthy dollop of <i>blessing</i> the heroes who fought against terror in Afghanistan: <iq>Start with ten thousand Afghan civilians, bomb into mulch, stir with processed plutonium from spent daisy-cutters, and voilà---the dead are avenged!</iq> If you want to really get a good look into the psyche of American media, check out <iq>ABC Family's griefsploitation piece "Love Legacy: The Babies of 9-11," which takes a "look at the pregnant wives left widowed on that day."</iq> So listen carefully as you hear benediction after blessing after high-minded speech. They're just words. Watch the actions instead. This is the perfect opportunity for the military and the administration and whoever else is in charge around here to attempt to capture the 'hearts and minds' of the American people, or at least a large enough proportion to go in for that attack on Iraq. The attack which, if any politician was actually honest, would be characterized as a glorious battle fought to retrieve the oil which is rightly ours, that <i>American</i> oil, from those heathens that have camped out on top of it. Listen to your President, and <iq>hear how Bush's post-9-11 policies, which involve sucking up to brutal dictators in Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia while plotting a coup against the democratically-elected president of Venezuela, promote liberty throughout the world.</iq> Reconcile it with his words, if you can. If you can do it, presumably you're the right type of American. Pre-approved and loyal.