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Just saw "Hairspray," admittedly, out of curiosity to see an overweight John Travolta in touch with his feminine side. Soon an amazingly talented dancing cast had my fingers & feet tapping and me captivated, until I realized what an unpleasant film I was watching. This is a message film and the message is even more daunting than the dancing, or than the fact that Queen Latifah has finally been given a role worthy of her talents, and her soul.

If you can't imagine how a 2007 film version of an old Broadway style book musical is unpleasant, go see it, or go rummaging through those old boxes in the basement corner, or pick the lock on the ancient trunk in the attic. You'll find what I (and "Hairspray") are talking about, right there in the center of your chest, the pit of your gut, right where you left it, in the back of your mind.

You know, we can all remember when the bullets flew for John, Martin & Bobby, yet we avoid memories of "negroes and whites" not being allowed to dance together in public, (on or off TV), even above the Mason-Dixie Line. I've heard it said, there were two 1960s. Indeed, it was at once both our best and worse National decade, since Lincoln tried to save us from ourselves.

Still we are masters, not so much of our souls as of our world view. How else do you think we could allow, in so small an amount of time, such a small group, of small thinking mini-minds, to so completely revise our sense of self, and so utterly redefine us to the world. Well, they couldn't have done it without our help.

I mean, it didn't start in a court room in 2000. It just became arrogant enough to crawl out from the shadows, stand up in full view, wrapped in the Stars & Strips, Bible in hand, flashing a self-assured blatant smirk in our faces, and we were Bushwhacked!

It didn't start with the punch line, "Axis of Evil." It didn't even start with a President claiming that our Government was not there to serve us, for "Government is the problem." Well, if it wasn't, it certainly is now.

While Watergate certainly added a well placed nail in the Nation's self-respect (but nothing like the Bush League), it really started the first time we lied to ourselves about ourselves. Like Thanksgiving: Who really were the guests and who were the intolerable hosts? Who brought the food and who feasted on the blood of innocence? And who is still teaching our children a history of lies.

Let me help you with this one: The Americans brought the corn & turkey to welcome the invading Europeans to their land. Get it, Got it, Good. Then stop lying about it every year. Pray instead, Thank You Dear God for Sending the bloody savages with food in our time of need, so we could survive the harsh winters in a strange & foreign land, long enough to steal everything they had.

And the Mt Rushmore shrine: All due respect to the sincere Artistic Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, but President Calvin Coolidge was chiseled out of a quarter of a million dollars, so South Dakota business men would benefit from tourist dollars. Now who could blame them, but let's face up to it.

And what about President James Polk invading Mexico just because they didn't want to sell New Mexico & California to us. And you thought Bush invented pre-emptive strike outs.

And still Mexicans believe in the invitation
our Statue of Liberty offers: "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Guess they didn't notice she was facing Europe with her back to Mexico when she made that offer.
At least Cuba gets her profile.

All I'm saying is, a great country, indeed a great people don't just wake up one day with leaders like Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, DeLay, Rice, Newt Gingrich, and yes, Mark Foley -- abusing our national trust, treasures, resources, future and youth, unless we've practiced some pretty bad habits along the way!

BUT, it's not the mistakes, not the bigotry, not the growing pains or the hypocrisies -- it's the attempts to justify, the sweeping under the carpet, the insistence that we are the greatest, the biggest, the best, indeed the perfect; it's our secrets, and it's their cover-ups, that now give us the Government Ronald Reagan predicted: Indeed, this administration is not the solution, it is the problem!