9/11 Performance Art

Here's an analysis headlined "Critics mock choice of Kissinger for inquiry," which disappointingly sources only Hitchens and a guy from the Federation of American Scientists as objecting. In an AP story, Vinegar Joe Lieberman calls the Kissinger appointment a good beginning and makes some mushmouthed comments about how Henry the K won't strike a partisan note while pursuing truth and justice. Thank God for Barney Frank, the only man with the balls to object to the appointment.

The Kissinger appointment makes me wonder if President Bush isn't pulling off a massive Andy Kaufman routine—seeing how brazenly he can push the audience before people start heckling. Early evidence indicates this latest gag is being met with the same stunned silence that greeted Kaufman's wrestling-women gambit. It would take a crack team of anti-American agents working round the clock to come up with a worse, more impolitic person than Kissinger for this job, but still there seems to be a pretty broad acquiescence. Bush even managed to get a few victims' families in for the signing ceremony. Can anybody out there imagine losing family members in the Pentagon or the WTC, and then actually being happy that Henry Kissinger is the guy who's been chosen to do a full and honest investigation?