Journalism and the Bush Years
Misinformation was the most potent weapon
of the Bush Regime. How soon we forget.
Remember him clowning at the Press Club?
Journalists laughed with him, not at him.
(The new crop of undereducated – but
photogenic – media types are a sorry lot.
Unlike Morrow, they’re not hired for their brains;
unlike Cronkite, they’re not to be trusted.)
“No WMDs under here!” he bozoed, to
wave upon wave of pandering giggles.
While I, the Christian,
and my Riley, the Jew,
and our friend Muna, the Muslim,
used to sit on her porch and drink “ka-hway”
(which is Arabic coffee powered by something
stronger than nuclear fission could EVER produce;
this bunker-buster brew with thick black syrup on the bottom
is the stuff of dreams except you never go to sleep
until two days later and even then
you are still talking VERY fast).
On 9/11 we sat in her kitchen and cried.
Later on Muna’s porch
(all too soon snarled at by passersby)
we sipped her coffee
and cried some more.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Also at the poetic oasis, Poets United.
Sharp Little Pencil 