Boy, there’s nothing like a disaster to blow the stale stuff off the front pages. I remember back in ought one, we were all a’hubbub about the sad disappearance of a young woman in Washington, and her romantic ties to a soon to be extinct congressman. Remember her name? Chondra Levy. His was Gary Condit. Then came 9/11, and … Whoosh. Forgotten. Well, his career bit the big one, but I don’t think he was climbing any higher anyhoo.
And not long ago, there was a woman camped out in Bush’s neighborhood staging a protest. Katrina swept Cindy Sheehan away about as cleanly as anything else. She got on a bus and vanished. Along with a certain little scandal involving Carl Rove and the identity of a CIA operative named Valerie Plame. Whoosh. Gone with the Wind.
Now Bush is putting Rove in charge of reconstruction down yonder. Scandal forgotten. Too bad the water didn’t wash New York Times reporter Judith Miller out of jail. Rove is off to help Bush’s buddies shovel up some reconstruction dough — grease a few palms and gild his parachute — and Miller’s still stuck in the pokey, far as I know.
Metaphor 