Google Goes The Bong Water: Bombs Away, Man!

You have heard the term before, I bet, but it is completely new to me: Google Bomb. It is a fun little term, reminiscent of something a baby might gurgle forth -- from either end -- while nursing or taking a bottle. It sounds harmless. But is it?

If you are paying attention, then you've heard that the ultra-right wing TV network, ABC, is airing a docu-drama called "The Path to 9/11." Democrats instantly cried foul when they discovered the movie would not tout their party's line. Calling the film "A Despicable, Irresponsible Fraud," Democrats are muscling ABC and others not to show the film at all. And Fox News reports that bloggers are planning (I can't confirm this) to Google Bomb the whole thing (for further reading on the fine art of Google Bombing, read this and this.)

All sorts of people have jumped into the fray. Bill Clinton is apparently upset that the film might show that his eight years protecting us from terror (and bombing the hell out of Iraq), had something to do with the lead up to 9/11. Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger (you know, the Clinton Administration member who stole documents from the National Archives on the eve of his testimony before the 9/11 Commission) have even drafted letters to ABC's parent company, the flamingly right-wing Disney Co., rebuking Disney for the film's inaccuracies.

Speaking of Mr. Berger, who was Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, I cannot help but share this drop of LSD from the July 21, 2004 Washington Post:

Berger's attorneys have acknowledged that he removed numerous classified memos, and apparently discarded some, as he reviewed materials on behalf of the Clinton administration for the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They said the removal of documents was inadvertent but that Berger was aware he was violating the law when he removed his handwritten notes without submitting them for review by National Archives staff. [emphasis added for maximum hallucinatory effect]

Is it at all disheartening to remind ourselves that the pothead, LSD generation is now in power in this country? Does the presence of the "one pill makes you small" diplomats in Washington explain how the above quote makes nary a ripple in the "give peace a chance" crowd intent on blaming George Bush for Pompeii and Jimi Hendrix' overdose? It really is a good question these bongers ask: Where is (snort, snort) the outrage?

But I digress; my short term memory is shot from all the second-hand cannibis smoke I am inhaling here at Contratimes (little conservative brother to High Times?).

What I've been discussing is the outrage over a film that threatens to cast a sacred cow into the abyss. That cow is that Democrats are without blame in their dealing with pre-9/11 threats; that all this fear and alarm and terror is due to Republicans and their bravado and bellicosity. Bush is a macho, fart-sniffing bully. Bill Clinton served ably as the world's pastor who never once inhaled even a fart. You get the picture: It's election time. 9/11, Iraq, global warming, election fraud, oil prices: you name it, the Democrats are going to milk it all for a few months merely to get a few votes, a few seats of power. What is sick is that, if we REALLY ARE AT WAR, Democrats have nearly unanimously contradicted not some things, but every thing that comes out of the President's mouth. They MUST contradict; for if they don't, they immediately render themselves superfluous. If there is really only one way to fight X, Democrats will nonetheless propagandize that X is illusory, or that fighting X just one way is foolish, fatal, or "unnuanced." That this happens on both sides of the political aisle is clear, though since I have been an adult this country has not been at war until recently: and war does necessitate some restraint for the sake of unity if a country wants to defend itself. I think that much of the criticism by the left is solely self-serving; they care only about themselves. Bush and Co. are nearly out of office; they have no selfish ambitions really left to serve and yet we are constantly warned that the Bushies are creating a neo-Nazi dynasty, dictatorial, fascistic or both. But it is their detractors who really do have something to gain, and we know what that is.

Perhaps we should create our own Google Bomb here. Perhaps we should storm Disney and ABC urging them not to cave in to censorship. Perhaps we should, like good Republicans, demand that ABC protects the rights of artists who have the right to spin 9/11 any way they deem necessary. After all, Republicans are well aware of the films and essays and books that "prove" that I or you or your crack dealer actually wrapped the World Trade Center in cordite, and yet the RNC itself (unlike its DNC counterpart) does not rush out to ask Google to stop providing access to such material. My recent conversation with a Dutch couple who have American citizenship illustrates a very important point: while both of them are wildly liberal, they find they can have more balanced political conversations with conservatives because (or so they argue) conservatives understand -- fully -- each person's right to free speech. According to my Dutch friends, liberals simply do not get that part of the Constitution.

Are they right? They think so.

Peace.

PS. I think that if we do create a Google Bomb, we should ensure that the search query "Best President in History" lands on Luke Buckham, and the phrase "myopic genius" lands on Mike the Eye Guy." Surely we can at least agree that if we Google "Ladies Man" we end up here; or "Babish Canadian Bloggers" gets us here; or "Springsteen wannabe" gets us to this fine place.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.

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