Friday, January 8, 2010

Setting Priorities?

Now that The Wall Street Journal is ensconced in the blogosphere with its Speakeasy site (with the capital "Y" symbolizing a spilled martini glass, presumably to tweak memories of the original semantics of the world), you can find some of the damndest things there. Consider this tidbit put up by Michelle Kung about an hour ago:

“Lost” fans can relax and retire that #NoStateofUnionFeb2 Twitter hashtag. According to Speakeasy’s sister blog Washington Wire, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says that he does not “foresee a scenario” where the ABC show would be pre-empted for President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, as was previously feared by show obsessives (Jan. 26 is now the projected date). In the (tweeted) words of “Lost” Executive Producer Damon Lindelof: OBAMA BACKED DOWN!!!! Groundhog Day is OURS!!!!!!! (God Bless America).” Now, obsessives can resume analyzing the promotional art for the final season of “Lost” for clues as to fate of Jack, Sawyer & Co.

I can think of two ways to read this. On the surface it resolves the kerfuffle that arose when February 2 was announced as the date when the State of the Union address would be delivered, meaning that Lindelof's tweet is justified. I find that a bit chilling; and it strikes me as a contemporary variant on Colonel "Bat" Guano's line in Dr. Strangelove about not messing with the Coca-Cola company. On the other hand I do not think I can remember a State of the Union address being delivered later than January, which leads me to wonder or not this whole affair was a publicity stunt for ABC. That would be even more chilling, particularly if it surfaced that the White House had been complicit in the execution of the stunt! Do we need to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the LostGate affair?

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