There are no pudgy index fingers in the blame game that has come to define the American political system. Between Katrina and 9-11, the politicians, pundits, and even the mainstream media have worked off any excess fat.
Katrina’s Ten Minute Work-out, you’ll recall, came in several variations. There was black vs. white, local vs. federal, region vs. region, and the hackneyed offering of Republican vs. Democrat.
Now — just in time for the November elections, there’s a new finger-exercise video: The Path to 9/11, helpfully provided by ABC.
While this latest skinny-finger flick lacks the variety of options enjoyed by the Katrina blame-gamers, it’s a much more strenuous work-out, and those accusatory digits are flexing and stretching with great energy. It’s not just the same-old, though; to add interest, the marketers and producers invited our schoolchildren to join this latest national carnival.
(They’ve respectfully declined, which is bad news for our weight-issue, but good news for the future.)
Beyond the common themes of Red/Blue, Left/Right, Dem/Rep, though, there’s an underlying beat to which all this frenetic activity gyrates: everything is always “their” fault.
Can ABC recall this divisive exercise in partisanship? Sure… but that won’t stop those fingers. This blaming and pointing seems to have evolved into a nervous national tic.
Moderates, of course, possess ten slim digits, because on any given issue, we may point either direction, or at everyone. Even our thumbs are limber, aimed as they often are at ourselves… but most of us can take very little comfort in this, when our fellow citizens possess eight (nine?) grotesque, over-stuffed sausages on their partisanized hands.
Still — take comfort, America. For all the recent hoopla about American obesity and our lack of exercise, I think we must have the fittest index fingers on the planet.