by Richard Stern

Beautiful fall days here in Chicago, "regular" is down to $2.64 (60 cents lower than it was weeks ago), the Dow Jones is near its all-time high, our president assures us that his opponents are well-intentioned, patriotic Americans although "absolutely wrong," the day's news is salted with the usual quota of bizarre horrors (fetuses knifed from mother's bodies, a Colorado school held hostage by a transient madman), the annual fires are devouring thousands of western acres, Baghdad's daily life remains as agonizing as, say, Srbrenica's during its recent auto-da-fe, the Pope explains and re-explains the old warnings of a Western statesman about Islam's bellicose proselytizing, Mozart's Idomeneo (heads of Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed carted on stage for God knows what reason) is cancelled for fear an angry Muslim will display the violence about which the Pope talked, Cormac MacCarthy publishes another beautifully written book about--this time, post-apocalyptic--bleakness, pre-electoral discoveries such as Senator George Allan's ugly collegiate vocabulary and uneasy jitterbugging away from his Tunisian-Jewish mother's ethnicity and his opponent Webb's old animadversions on women's military inadequacies, the pro football season is in full swing, the baseball play-offs are almost here, what can the average American household complain about short of obesity, poor schooling, enormous medical and scholastic costs, a mendacious and hypocritical government that talks tough and takes few tough decisions ("Chicken and Rice"), a governing class so aloof from the intense presidential rhetoric of total war against the islamo-fascists that almost none of its sons and daughters is inspired to actually enlist and fight in it. (Where are all the Bush family children, the nephews, nieces, and daughters of our inspiring leader?) Oh say, can you see..?