This post is so, like, 15 minutes ago, but I have some thoughts on the Great Blackout of 2003, which didn't affect us Virginians a bit:
-- The blackout represents a huge failure of American journalism. I realize that our aging power transmission infrastructure isn't nearly as important as a basketball player getting arrested for rape, but isn't our watchdog press supposed to be reporting on things such as the potential for gigantic, potentially disastrous failures of public utilities? Covering an expectant mother's murder in San Francisco just isn't as important.
-- The majority of Americans are decent, helpful people. The news from around the country didn't report any crime wave, much less rioting. People got through the trouble without a lot of complaining, and assisted others in need. Why didn't anybody talk about that?
-- It took Hillary about ten minutes before she started running her mouth about how the blackout was President Bush's fault. Her husband was in office throughout the 1990s. Does anyone recall him making a big push for electrical infrastructure reform? No? Then will no one rid us of this meddlesome Queen of the Harpies? (Two points for identifying the king and the "Simpsons" reference in the last sentence.)
-- What the heck happened to 'acts of God'? There seem to be a lot of people who can't accept that "things fall apart," as Yeats wrote: fallible humans create fallible objects and systems. (Yeah, he was writing about the Antichrist, but you get it.) It would seem that we need to fix a few things, but this isn't Haiti. Not very many people have generator backups because of unreliable electrical supplies. The only people who got really excited about all this are people who want to spend more taxpayers' dollars (see the Queen reference above.)
Let's also note the opportunism of that empty suit former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson (D-Los Alamos) who declared that the US had a "third-world" power distribution system -- as if it had been of Swiss quality when he was in office.
1) the king is Henry II of England, who wished to rid himself of the "troublesome priest" Thomas Becket.
2) The Simpsons reference is to John "Queen of the Harpies! Here's your crown!" and Gloria, the quarreling couple in "The War of the Simpsons" (Marge and Homer go to marriage counseling, and Homer sneaks out to go fishing.) John and Gloria seem an awful lot like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. There is also a nice Algonquin Round Table joke in this episode.
3) "Queen of the Harpies" is the perfect sobriquet for the junior senator from New York. I don't know what it's going to take to extract her and her consort from the public eye.
Amazing how 32 months of a Bush presidency can degrade the electrical grid that much, isn't it?
PeonyMoss, you win the prize. Bravo! What's the Algonquin Round Table joke?
the setup for the episode, of course, is that Homer and Marge throw a dinner party for their friends. Homer has too much to drink and throughly embarrasses Marge (he starts off with a fly-in-the-plastic-ice-cube prank and it goes downhill from there....)
The morning after the party, Homer tries to remember what he did, and at first his memories are of himself sitting at a round table in a hotel, entertaining the others there with witty repartee. They are all wearing elegant clothing reminiscent of the 'thirties. I think the man seated at his left is Alexander Woolcott; the woman at his right may be Dorothy Parker. (I don't know who else was at the Round Table so I don't recognize their pictures.) The whole scene is drawn in a faintly Hirschfield style.
I'm sure it doesn't say anything good about me that I remember stuff like this, but this is one of my favorite episodes just for the Round Table and the "Queen of the Harpies!" jokes.
It speaks very well of you. "The Simpsons" is the only reason to have a TV in your house. That episode isn't in my Top 10 Favorites, but on occasion, I say "Here's your crown, your highness!" if I want to bug my wife. (As a joke -- she's not a harpie at all, quite the opposite, and she's one of the best wives I have.)