Christmas Morning Comin’ Down.

"How high is the bullshit, Momma?"

"Five feet high and risin'."

A tepid cup of air pudding whipped and frapped and frothed up into nothing in particular was what was on the menu this morning at the Mouse Circus, which was fine by me. I’m busily scooting between holiday commitments (digital and analog) out in the web-free zone...

...and I also hear tell there’s trouble over ta' Whoville.

Seems some sumbitch Halliburtoned the whole place last night and now they’re putting together a posse. I have a cousin in the next town over – WTF-ylvania – that's married to Cindy Lu's aunt, and he blew in a call and asked if I wanted to head over to the scene of the crime and help the locals do some Caroling with Extreme Prejudice.

So with any luck, some coal-hearted bastard’s gonna take a severe Grinchslapping before the sun rises, and I am always up for that.

But in the interstitial moments...

I caught a few minutes of Brokaw and Koppel waltzing each other around the set of Timmuh’s House of Ponderously Declaimed Quotes. Unseemly, especially as they were both trying to lead while snowballing (look it up…but you won’t like it. Not nearly as “Yuletidy” as it sounds, so maybe wait until something a little more debauchery-based – like New Year's – hoves itself into view.) saccharine nougat about each other and the press generally back and forth until it looked as dirty and pallid as two-weeks-after-the-blizzard-alley-slush.

Mmmm! High-Glucose-and-lip-gloss Saliva Slurpees for everyone!

It was strange – and sad – to see Koppel explain that, in advance of Operation Clusterfuck, while the press might have been a tiny, (insert 322 hedging, qualifying, mitigating adjectives here) soft, it was nonetheless not the job of the press to do anything other that assume that they were being told the unalloyed truth by the Administration before the launching something as major as a massive land war in the Middle East.

Koppel explained that it was perfectly natural to assume that the politicians who were launched this invasion were simple, ‘umble public servants, doing nothing more than patrolling the streets of Mayberry, jiggling the doorknobs of Floyd’s Barber Shop and Wally's Garage to make sure all was safe and secure. That to push back on the facts even slightly was somehow wildly beyond what anyone could have expected from a free and fair press.

Oh, and that had 9/11 happened on Bill Clinton’s watch, Clinton would have invaded Iraq exactly as Dear Leader did.

Wow! I can’t even begin to parse all the things that are grotesquely wrong with that little slice of flippant and reckless Ouija-buggery other than to suggest that one may be forgiven for speculating that somewhere out there, Ken Mehlman is holding a gun to the head of Koppel’s favorite puppy, whispering into Ted’s earpiece, “Say it, bitch! Say it or I Rapture little Cronkite here to that big puppy farm in the sky!”

Then, oh, about three minutes later, the SAME Ted Koppel explained to us that Washington is a town overrun with press flaks and spinmonkeys who are only interested in Making Joyful Noises to the public about the Good News about their client's services, products, policies, bribery and various treasons. Which is why the press must be the one, vigilant institution focused on dragging the bad news and the unpleasant facts out from whatever Partisan Procrustean Bed in which they're being racked and ravaged.

In fact, Democracy itself demands it.

Except, of course, in the case of pre-Iraqi Invasion reporting…when reporters were (and, according to Koppel, should properly have been) obedient children who eat up all the yummy sugar cookies Rummy and Cheney baked for them and toddle off to bed and let the grownups worry about the why’s and where’s and wherefore's of taking America to war.


So, to translate from MSM Flabspeak into English, it is perfectly OK for the press to sup lavishly at the teat of the GOP Lie Machine until a story like Katrina literally knocks them off the bibble spigot by walloping them upside the head with an 80-pound maul of a story that is taking place literally in their own back yard…

…at which point the press will peevishly stagger to its feet, groggily spring into action, and then spend the next four months blearily congratulating themselves on what acutely perceptive newshounds they are.

Sad.

The only moment of relief was when Timmuh showed some tape from years gone by of Robert Frost reciting “The Gift Outright”, which was very nice. And since I have to get back on the road again –- and since the “Out To Noel” sign that everyone in Left Blogistan hangs on thier door uses phrase “miles to go” -- I thought it doubly appropriate to drag Frost’s brief masterpiece -- "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" –- out of the onionskin columbarium of my Norton Anthology and post it up here, along with two others that feel…emotionally timely.

First, since this is a blog, Frost on the subject of blogging at its best, with “A Time to Talk” …

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Second, in much of this country the nights are very long now, and cold. The time of year has come again when it’s easier for the blues or one's own “black dog” to slip in and settle down for longer visits.

So for those of us who are very well “Acquainted with the night” , this…

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

And lastly, the famous, gorgeous, sensual and seasonally-appropriate, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”....

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.