Hopium helps you forget several unpleasant facts
Hi, my name is John. I'm a hopium addict.
It's true. Yes, I'm a journalist. And that led to the harder stuff. Then one day, Barack phoned the Tribune and called me "bro."
Now, I'm addicted to hopium.
So if you're addicted to hopium, or you're worried that your loved ones might fall prey to its power, then please click on this link for the hard left's Moveon.org commercial for Barack Obama
"I've been living with it for a while now," says a young woman, talking as if she'd contracted a sexually transmitted disease.
That's how they discuss hopium. Like a disease. But they have nothing to be guilty about. It's not some disease that cranky old Republicans can't get because they stopped having sex.
It's hopium.
Once you see it, you won't be the only one addicted to hope. You'll all become addicted—you, your family and friends, even your pets, except for various crustaceans in your aquarium, which are immune. But you and yours are not immune. You'll all become hope-heads, together.
It's America's most powerful drug. Once on hopium, you won't care if Iran has nukes or if taxes are raised during a recession or whether Obama keeps flipping and flopping on everything from foreign wiretaps to withdrawing troops from Iraq.
Who cares? Relax. Hopium is your friend.
Just ask Republicans. They sure could use some, especially now that Republican Sen. Ted Stevens was indicted on corruption charges on Tuesday. But like lemmings, Republicans are stubbornly jumping off his bridge to nowhere.
Like today's liberals, yesterday's conservatives were also hopped up on hopium. This was years ago, when they yearned to believe in "big government conservatism," the Rule of Law Except for Scooter Libby and the Rovianization of federal prosecutors.
Now, John McCain is suffering the aftereffects, because most journalists are hope-heads who portray him as if he's the angry Scottish janitor guy on " The Simpsons." And most journalists—judging by their frenetic denials about liberal media bias—are obviously too far gone in the grip of hopium to remain rational.
"This is your brain," says a woman in the Obama ad holding a hard-boiled egg. She's an actress who once killed sexy vampires on TV.
"This is your brain on hope!" says an angry fellow sitting next to her, another actor, who played some random guy on "Boy Meets World."
He's still angry, holding a newly hatched chicken. It looks like a Peep, only alive and fluffy.
Alive. It's alive. Hope is alive.
"Hope. It could happen to you," says the narrator with a deep voice.
Then the screen is filled with Obama '08 and you realize it's a campaign commercial for Obama and you start to cry, like when you cry at Kodak commercials, or life insurance spots. We Americans are so emotional these days.
Obama hopium was so powerful, that that first rush of it, well, it sent a tingle up my leg. Or down my leg. Then up. So now, when I read newspaper stories about Obama's political history, like a recent gooey, puffy profile in the Washington Post and it didn't mention Obama as a willing member of Chicago's Daley machine, well, I didn't get angry.
Not anymore.
Why? Because I'm a hope-head.
Now, I don't get upset when foreign and national journalists fail to mention Tony Rezko, or the Daley boys, or how the Chicago machine plans to staff the Department of Justice, and the new Department of Homeland Casinos.
Who cares? I'm numb with hopium.
"I mean, this could happen to anybody," says a man in the ad.
"Anybody," says a doctor in scrubs.
"I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry," cries the stoned surfer dude.
For eight years—while the Republicans ran things—they thought hope was gone. Now, they think it's back.
I'm not the only one attending Hope-Heads Anonymous. Millions of us every day—including those 200,000 hope-head Europeans at the Obama rally in Berlin—are caught in its clutches.
One colleague whose blood is clear of hopium watched the Moveon.org ad, and said she wasn't hopeful. Rather, she was disturbed.
"The ad plays on irony, and at the same time, it supports the Obama propaganda about hope," she said. "How is that done? Irony on one hand, while driving the Obama message about hope. It's more than funny."
What is it, then?
"I don't know," she said. "I'm waiting for you to tell me."
I forgot. But then, they don't teach civics in schools anymore, so young people targeted by the Moveon.org ad can't tell me either.
What is this so-called "civics," anyway? Is it a bone near the pelvis? An economy car? Or, is it an Indonesian cat that eats coffee beans from the tree?
Does it matter, really?
Not if you're on hopium.
jskass@tribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-30-jul30,0,1670850,full.column
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