“Misery is the river of the world!” barks Tom Waits on his recently released recording BLOOD MONEY. Blending the decadent howl of Kurt Weil with the gut bucket growl of John Lee Hooker, Waits once again turns the Zeitgeist rock over to show us the squirming, writhing sorrow just beneath the surface of our world. But the premise is timely, and opens up so many cans of worms in my own heart (if you’ll pardon the disgusting mixed metaphor).

It’s been months since we last touched base here, and in that time, the world has changed. Thousands of Americans have been brutally murdered by religious zealots live on CNN. The new president has declared war on a vague, abstract concept called terrorism (how do you declare war on a noun?). And the world has gotten sharper teeth. Forget the fact that our economy has tanked, and we’re all fighting to climb into a smaller life boat, chewing at each other’s heels. The worst part is the terrible genie that’s been released, a genie that will never, EVER go back into its bottle. How do we raise kids in this world? What will I tell my sons about their future?

I’m not going to proselytize here as to whether we should nuke the entire Middle East or start kneeling down on our prayer mats and kiss our lazy, narcissistic, smug American asses goodbye. But I will paraphrase what I think is the most intelligent analysis of this new “conflict” (by the great novelist E.L. Doctorow in a NY TIMES editorial): What this is, is a battle between cultures--one that believes in living purely by fundamental religious dogma and rules, and one that believes in the freedom to explore the possibilities of an undefined universe. In other words, the clash between rigid rules and fluid freedoms. And I’ll take freedom any time! (By the way, I urge you to dispense with my flaky paraphrasing and look up the original Doctorow editorial--it’s pure genius.)

But the trick here is what we should do as a humane, enlightened people. One thing I’m certain we should NOT do is simply follow our leaders like sheep. After living through 8 years of listening to right wing gadflies picking over the Clinton machine like maggots on a dying corpse, we now have to listen to these same parasites attacking anybody who has the gall to question what GW & Company are up to. Here’s a news bulletin for all you so-called patriots with your gigantic mail-order flags billowing over your gas-guzzling four-wheelers: Questioning authority is what made America great, and it’s what keeps us great. The minute you chill dissension, you end up in Nazi-land.

Recently, a relatively trivial bit of aftermath from September 11th drove home this problem for me: The great POLITICALLY INCORRECT WITH BILL MAHER finally fell victim to this new McCarthyism. I will so dearly miss Maher and his hilariously brilliant and curmudgeonly sensible proclamations. I truly believe that PI was the greatest non-fiction show in the history of television. Why? Because it was real. It was true cathode verite. It questioned authority on both sides of the ideological spectrum. And it was truly politically incorrect (which, ironically enough, was the reason ABC pulled the plug--Maher had the nerve to actually say something politically incorrect about the World Trade Center attack).

HELLO!?! ABC? ARE YOU LISTENING? The show was called POLITICALLY INCORRECT....

Oh well...I might as well stop hyperventilating and get back to work crafting another one of my escapist books.

God knows there’s a lot more nowadays from which to escape!

See you in the unemployment line!