Misanthrope's Corner - George W. Bush's faith-based initiative and other current events - Buyers Guide - Column

Have you heard about the fabulous new true-life horror movie? It's called Revulsion and it's about a columnist who suddenly and inexplicably finds that she can't bring herself to read another newspaper or watch another talking-head show. The promos are really neat; they show a picture of me curled up in the fetal position, and the voice-over says: "What happens to a cultural commentator when the only comment she can make about the culture is a raised middle finger? This is her story!"

I can't pinpoint exactly when it started, only that it was somewhere between the controversy over the Army's berets and the trial of Puffy Combs. I was able to form an opinion on the berets but I had no idea who Puffy Combs was, except that he was an athlete or something. I did not consider it necessary to follow his fortunes because O. J. Simpson's trial has made child's play of certain kinds of cultural commentary. It's as simple as shifting the cards around on a perpetual calendar-different year, same dozen Black History Months. Whoever Puffy Combs was, the cultural comment was ready and waiting, carved in stone: "Whatever he did, he didn't do it."

At some point in the unavoidable trial coverage I was force-fed the name of Puffy's girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez. I knew nothing about her either, except that she sang or something. Probably "or something" is closer to the mark. Whatever show I tuned in to, whatever newspaper I opened, there the two of them were, until my nerves gave way and I went into an or-something funk.

Innocuous words can sound very seductive if you say them over and over at top speed. As the words "or something" pounded through my brain, they put me in mind of a romantic idyll or an alluring adventure that quickly took on an exotic, east-of-Suez flavor: "The schooner sailed past the sampans into Or Something harbor at dawn." . . . "The delicate carvings on the Temple of Or Something glistened in the tropical rain." . . . "The grenadiers won the Victoria Cross for their gallantry at the siege of Or Something."

In short, I was not myself, but then neither were the Army Rangers and the Pentagon, who had turned into the Duchess of Windsor and Lily Dache arguing about which hat to wear. Telling myself that if they could be frivolous then so could I, I played hooky from current events and treated myself to a vacation of watching and reading nothing except what I damn well pleased.

I did scan the papers and surf the news shows, but only for as long as I could stand it, which was never long. The moment the jungle drums sounded from the Or Something pagoda I was off again on the road to Mandalay, so my take on the latest news cycle is necessarily sketchy. Since I can't attack any subject in depth this time around, I'll do a potpourri of opinions. If any of them strikes you as odd, blame it on the Somerset Maugham remittance man having his twelfth gin and tonic on the veranda of the Or Something Hotel in Pago-Pago.

1. I am anti-beret whatever their color because I don't think American soldiers should look like foreigners. What the Army needs is a distinctively American hat, and one already exists: the "forage cap" of the Civil War era. It's the soft kepi worn by enlisted men (and a few generals; Stonewall Jackson preferred it to the officer's slouch hat). The forage cap being soft, the crown slopes forward at a rakish angle and faces out so that insignia can be pinned on it. The forage cap was also worn by the post-Civil War cavalry, giving it an indelible association with John Wayne, who surely does more for the morale of U.S. troops than Jean-Paul Sartre.

2. Bush's "faith-based initiative" is so unthought-out that it practically screams Arianna Huffington. It's gotten so complicated so fast that they're already tangled up in arguments about how to break down a good deed into its spiritual and temporal components so they can award tax credits for some of the free soup, but not all of it. Let one drunk fail to finish eating before the hymns start, and churches will have to cook the books to save the Constitution. Guaranteeing still more turmoil is the plan to "fund the individual," meaningless buzztalk dreamed up by putative conservatives who have yet to grasp the fact that all vouchers are simply the welfare state in single file.

First Amendment conflicts aside, the worst portent of the scheme is its truculent point man, John J. DiIulio Jr., who blasted "predominantly white, ex-urban evangelical" divines for their lack of interest in urban programs. This didn't sit too well down at the church in the wildwood. Retorted Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, "It would rankle less if he wasn't so ignorant about us and didn't try to stereotype us." If the faith-based initiative is Dubya's idea of reaching out, it won't be long before he has to do a real stretch and reach out to the Cavaliers and Roundheads he has created.

3. Where is Laura Bush? I admit that her silence is blessed after Hillary's din, but she had barely moved into the White House before she left for an extended stay in Texas, supposedly to oversee the decoration of their ranch home. Something isn't quite right. Still waters run deep, so they say. The stillest and deepest belonged to Greta Garbo, who abruptly ended a dispute with Hollywood moguls by saying, "I tink I go home now." She meant Sweden.