I highly recommend that you watch the movie Norbit. I was afraid going in that it would follow a predictable pattern wherein all of the funny scenes would have been featured in the various trailers, hence defeating the purpose of actually watching the film. I was wrong, as I so often am. It certainly took the sting out of the unpleasantness that unfolded this evening, even though I extend my congratulations to the Red Sox equipment staff for corking as many bats as they did prior to the inexplicable 11 run explosion this evening and getting away with it.

I also wish I cared about the latest Pacman Jones incident. I can't shake the feeling that as a sports fan and a citizen, I ought to have some sort of opinion on it, one way or the other. But I just don't give a damn. Let him play, don't let him play. Have him shot, don't have him shot. I really don't care. I just want him to go away.

I also watched the movie Breach tonight. I recommend that you avoid it, if at all possible. I found it boring, preachy and slightly anti-Catholic. Of course, I cannot be expected to be objective on that last point, as I might be the last practicing Catholic under 30 in the state of Massachusetts thanks to the criminal negligence and general incompetence of the Archdiocese. But that is neither here nor there.

The scene in the film that offended me most was a sequence where the portraits of the President and the Attorney General in the hallway of the FBI corridor were changed. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno went down and up went Bush and Ashcroft. I felt that was excessive; I felt the scene intended to shift the responsibility for this episode onto the current President. I understand that he is massively unpopular, but he doesn't deserve this.

In the interest of intellectual honesty, George W Bush was President when Robert Hanssen (the FBI agent in question, as this was based on a true story) was captured. He had been President of the United States for all of somewhere on the order of 25 days. Hanssen was captured on the 18th of February 2001. Taking that into consideration, I don't see what the scene where the portraits were changed brought anything to the table. Hell, a subtitle in the opening scene telling us that he was arrested on 2/18/2001 would have given a better a gauge of time frame as that scene did.

I don't mean to imply that any other presidential administration was responsible for this (Hanssen sold secrets over a 15 year period, so there were a few guys in the Oval Office) travesty. I also have no intention of endorsing a party, politician or candidate in this space. I just wish people would leave the current President alone. A 30 minute animated series on Cartoon Network isn't going to end his tenure in office any quicker. Subliminally including him in a boring spy movie isn't going to jar those who voted for him into consciousness.

What I resent above all is intellectual dishonesty. I believe that the current President has a legitimate right to his office. I don't believe Gore won in 2000 because I don't believe Gore believed he won. If Gore felt that he had a legitimate right to the office, he would have fought harder, or one of the 9 US Supreme Court justices would have dissented.

I also believe the lies that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth told in 2004. If they weren't true, a Yale educated graduate of BC Law, a former Federal prosecutor and sitting United States Senator would have found a legal recourse to fight back. And I believe that the President, the Vice President and the Cabinet believed the lies they told us all about WMDs when they told those lies to get us into the war in Iraq. I really do. I think they all thought that Saddam had more that the ten or twelve shells with Sarin that the military found over there.

No matter how you feel about the current administration, it should not impede your aesthetic judgements. A movie or show doesn't become better than it is empirically because it lampoons (no matter how slightly) an unpopular politician. If the two-thirds majority could have been inspired to impeach Bush, it probably would have happened by now. Or maybe he wouldn't have been reelected.

People on the political left need to recognize that while the conservatives, Republicans, Christians and what have you roaming the Earth and voting for people like George W. Bush are still out there, it might not help them to dismiss their opponents as morons. A comment on the current administration need not be included in every film, show and book. And maybe, just maybe, if they were to appeal to those individuals as though they were rational human beings and forsake the "I am supraman, I have the answers" approach, politics might be less contentious.

On a totally unrelated note, I had to be physically restrained by friends, family and well-wishers from burning all my ties. Apparently, arbiters of the way man should live like George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and John Mayer have been seen without the necktie. If only I'd known sooner. I try to pattern my life on what John Mayer does. I bought a guitar and I tried like hell to get some recording exec to pay me millions to suck, but I just couldn't carry it off. If only I hadn't been wearing a tie... Oh what could have been.