I like to consider myself a fine, upstanding American woman. I may not wear crying Eagle T-shirts or cover my car in magnets to verify to myself and others that I'm a good person, but I generally tend to drink domestic beers (at least on dollar draft night) and the last time I saw someone wearing a "these colors don't run" t-shirt I only joked about spraying it with bleach and laughing hysterically. I'm also a 12 year member of the American Legion Auxiliary, which consists of many public service activities including but not limited to wearing white sneakers and marching to Harry Connick Jr. music while my mom and aunt try not to break any of their digits twirling fake rifles whilst marking time and booty shaking. It's the sort of activity that makes my heart swell with pride, although in the interest of fairness that chest tightness also MIGHT be from my dinner, which happens to be expired-discounted-organic-shells-and-white-chedder, which I got at Tops and attempted to cook while simultaneously removing my boots, eating a pickle and trying to keep Louise from making love to my leg. She's in heat and is acting VERY unladylike, although that's not really not why I decided to post tonight.

This morning I heard a political commercial wherein a woman lamented the Iraq War. Obviously, people are dying and she is upset. Her exactly complaint was that (and I am paraphrasing since I heard this at 7:30 a.m.) if Bush wants people to go fight and die overseas, he can damn well send people from HIS own family, and stop killing off people from hers.

Obviously the expected knee-jerk reaction is for the listener to say "yeah! Why AREN'T Bush's underage teenage daughters fighting as soldiers in the Iraq war?!"

I'm not going to get into personal politics. I like to think that I'm like YOU, America. I have somewhere between 0 and 1000 problems with the current administration, and I believe that my rigorous schedule of learning how to do keg stands and working at a brainless office job gives me full bossing rights to dictate how the country should be run. I often find myself bitching to people about how things would be different if I were in charge, only in my case "different" means that there would be more 24 hour restaurants that serve nothing but soup and there would be separate parking lots for cars of different sizes, because I'm tired of trying to slowly back out from in between a SUV and a F150 only to have to slam on my brakes to avoid being rammed by some unseen mini-van. Hell, if whining about the wait for the new Futurama episodes doesn't fully qualify me to run the country, what does?

ANYWAY, here's the thing. REGARDLESS of how you personally feel about The War, or War in General, or Bush, or Republicans, or Democrats, or Iraq, or various religions neither of us understand, a commercial wherein someone bitches that their family members in the military are actually *gasp* doing military activities is pretty ignorant.

The people who are overseas right now SIGNED UP for the military. I know the Army likes to air those slick, fancified commercials that imply you can join the Service for the reasons of learning wireless networking and meteorology and mountain climbing, but there's also that little thing where you learn to use various types of weaponry and ballistics. And guess what?! The reason you learn about weapons in the military is because...write this down, kids...sometimes, people are going to shoot back. Yes! What did you think those guns shot? FLOWERS?! Furthermore, if you don't think it's fair that a vast beaurocracy would make you fight in a war you don't technically believe in, then DON'T JOIN THE MILITARY. It's not like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where you can pick and choose what's "noble" and what's "wrong." I mean, why the hell do you think they're wearing HELMETS in these commercials?!

I'm not saying that you shouldn't join the army, but for crying out loud, make sure your family doesn't wander around wringing their hands saying "gosh, I can't belive Johnny had to go over there where they're blowing up buildings every day! How can this happen?" Someone, please explain to these people that it's one of those occupational hazards we've all come to know and love. Turn on your TV or take a gander around your library. Look how many war documentaries and stories there are out there. If you are surprised that people in the military go to war, well, you probably need to watch a little more AMC there, Buster Brown, or maybe at least read something that ISN'T porn, for a change.

So yeah. To sum up: like him or hate him, you probably shouldn't suggest that Bush send his high school aged daughters to Iraq, because they can't legally enter into a binding contract yet, and you probably shouldn't go into a job if you're not totally clear on the job duties, especially if those job duties might involve being cannon fodder for a good cause or not.

Let's read things before we sign them people, and let's stop wasting money on party-sponsored political commercials, because I'm sure we could spend it on more important things. Such as pie.