Conspiracy theorists love the one about the Kennedy boys, Jack and Bobby, and the late Norma Jean. But, let’s face it, they don’t make tomatas like Marilyn any more, and the current administration ain’t exactly full of babe magnets.

In other words, it’s a whole different millenium and enchilada. So, the hot, blonde broad is now Anna Nicole. The nation, far from Camelot, is all caught up in an unwinnable war, whilst it’s attention is constantly splintered elsewhere. And, GWB’s accent is as phony as the Kennedys’ is distinctive.

You look at the news reels and it makes it seem like folks gave a shit about civil rights and moon landings and “asking what we could do for our country” and pigs and bays and all sorts of news type things way back when. I was a mere fetus by the time Jack was picked off, so I don’t actually fucking know if people cared. Seems like it though.

I do know that attention today seems unfocused and shallow. It could be it’s always that way. But, for this week, the loss of Molly Ivins, sadly seems barely noticed. Tim Russert testifying in a trial, which could or should be the major historical footnote of just how fucked up the Bush administration has been, is itself a footnote to the busy news cycle of an astronaut in diapers and a lonely, tragic woman variously worshipped and vilified dying with just the right note of kinda, sorta possibly sordidness.

I’m pretty sure Cheney was behind the Plame leak, regardless of Scooter, the fall guy, and his trial. It’s not that hard to imagine his engineering all sorts of diversions to keep us the unwashed masses from noticing. Kind of like that WMD story we all were fed.

What’s one more fatality beyond the over three thousand losses the war has brought to the U.S.