That First Step Is the Hardest

We have spent so much time in the last two weeks transfixed by a multi-media seance approaching and surpassing a real life, real time version of Lost with the human tragedy that is and forever will be Malaysian Air Flight 370 playing out on every screen possible across the country and around the globe, it's almost crass to suggest we refocus on something else, as opposed to anything else.

Friends and families of those who perished deserve answers and the peace of some form of closure and I hope they get both, most especially out of the gaze of a world of gawkers as we all slowed down to take a look and offer opinion masquerading as fact that was often as far-fetched as it was fatuous.

The winner in the mass media category, knowing you realize my heart beats on the left side of my body, is (perhaps for you a surprise) not FAUX Gnus who were, I think, really in their element, unencumbered by actual facts and free, if not eager, to throw anything that might be a theory against the wall to see it stuck.

Nope, in my view, the nadir of coverage was CNN putting a psychic on the air I guess because it's a violation of policy to just look into the camera and say "we got nothing." It could have only been worse had Piers Morgan been allowed to interview her.

Meanwhile half a world away, for those too young to have ever witnessed it and those too old to remember it from its seventy year off-Broadway run, the Cold War emerged from retirement, prodded by Vlad the Other Impaler as Russia proved the wisdom of that old expression, "you get more with kind words and a tank than you do with kind words alone." So praise the borscht and pass the 125 mm shells and clear the heqq out of the Crimea if you're affiliated with the Ukraine military.

Perhaps escaping your notice, though not mine because he's always been a loathsome grease ball, was, in the aftermath of the previous Sunday's Crimean referendum whose sole question might as well have been "would you like to be shot in the back of the head as you stand here?" the endorsement of the result by none other than Harmid Karzai, the head of state of the increasingly embattled nation of Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai is certainly entitled to his opinion, at least for now while ISAF troops protect his position to express himself. I'm sure the fate of Dr. Mohammed Najibullah after his Soviet protectors departed a little over a quarter of a century ago cannot be too far from his waking thoughts.

And I, mindful of how often the oceans of the world were discussed in recent days, think about a German expression that most neatly captures Karzai's conundrum, "he who abandons a sinking ship that does not sink, needs to be a very good swimmer."

It's often a fine line between Mae West the actress and the life vest, though sometimes the mileage may vary.
-bill kenny