Not only is this hooker mean, she's also stupid.

I'm not a big fan of Tom Friedman, the columnist for the NY Times who bought into the whole neocon promise of puppies and rainbows in Iraq.

But today, he gets it right.

In a column titled, Dumb As We Wanna Be, he rips into Congress, the president and two of our three presidential candidates for their stupid energy policy. I urge you to read it. It should set your hair on fire.

While the last 48 hours have been all-Reverend-Wright-all-of-the-time, news like this goes hat in hand, an orphan begging for a few minutes of our attention and in America, this is like asking the president to read a book without pictures.

But that's not really fair. Because it's not just the president who is locked into a permanent, petulant childhood. It's all of us, all squalling like babies.

I don't want to pay taxes! Wah! I don't want to take the bus! Wah! I want my Deal or No Deal! I want it! I want it! I want it!



What has happened to us? How, as a nation, have we become so infantilized? How have we failed to grow into serious people willing to make sacrifices for our common good?

This society, more than ever before, exists on people who want whatever they see. It needs people who will scream like a brat in Walmart until we get whatever gee-gaw captures our limited attention span. We don't want to work for it or, God forbid, save for it. We want it now, and we're willing to go into debt to get it.



But that doesn't explain everything. I have seen the American people work and sacrifice if given the right leadership. After 9/11, we all looked to our leaders and asked, "What can I do?"

I was certainly not alone in my willingness to do just about anything. And I'm sure I'm not the only person whose first thought was, "Let's get out of this oil game. That's a start."

Now, I'm just a schmuck in North Carolina, but even I could see our continued reliance on Saudi Arabia wasn't in our best interest, particularly when most of the hijackers and their leader were Saudi. I mean, you don't have to be the president to be that stupid, do you?

No, if George Bush had taken our unified energy and spirit, and set us on a moon-landing style course, we would be well on our way to clean energy independence. I believe that.

But like an indulgent parent, Bush told us to go out and buy something. Don't worry, go shopping. Again, we were treated like children and sadly, that's exactly how we've responded.

And now we're about to do it again. Faced with rising gas prices, two of our presidential candidates are looking at what's easy, not what's right. And the one candidate not willing to buy votes at 18 cents a gallon?

He's on the ropes. All because of an angry old minister who thinks the US government hasn't always had the best interests of black people held close to its stone-cold bureaucratic heart.

So, who wins when we focus on the mean and stupid? Who wins when we act like children and always fill our fists with sweets?

Maybe these two.


Or these two.



Or these two.


Or maybe these two.

But I guarantee, it's not us.