Last week, in Designer Administration, Color-Coded World, I wrote of the plight of the Bush administration, trapped in various, burgeoning color-alert schemes. Five-color systems of which only two colors (yellow and orange) proved operative; three-color systems that went down in flames, and so on. This administration certainly does trot out its alerts at remarkably convenient moments, as Frank Rich pointed out in the Sunday New York Times. (“Let John F. Kerry roll out John Edwards as his running mate, and Tom Ridge rushes to grab back the TV spotlight by predicting that Al Qaeda will ‘disrupt our democratic process.’ Never mind that he had no ‘precise knowledge’ of such an attack or any plans to raise his color-coded threat level; his real mission, to wield fear as a weapon of mass distraction, had been accomplished.”) And certainly, the alerts are meant to stoke fear, distract and deflect attention from events the administration would prefer we not attend to, but also — let’s never forget — cover their butts, which means, of course, masking their own fears that they’ll be caught off-guard by an attack of some unexpected sort. After all, they’ve been color-alerting us based on “best information,” “chatter,” background natter and the like for over two years and nothing whatsoever has happened in the “Homeland.”
If anyone were thinking about it, this might be seen as yet another across-the-board “intelligence failure,” the sort that deserves at least a major investigatory commission obligated to dump a massive tome on the public and guaranteed to assure us that everyone alive — hence, no one in particular — was responsible, or that the CIA alone did it. By the way, in the last couple of weeks, by my count, the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee (511 pages), the Army Inspector General’s Abu Ghraib whitewash (300 pages), and the 9/11 Commission book (516 pages) mean that over 1,300 pages of small-print reading have been downloaded on the American public. If that isn’t a conspiracy worthy of significantly recolor-coding the Homeland Security alert system, I don’t know what is.
In response to “Designer Administration,” Rebecca Solnit whose recent book Hope in the Dark brought a little golden sunlight into our world — recalibrate it Yellow Alert and detain someone — sent me the following report on a pastel-alert crisis that had, in the crunch of alerts, somehow passed beneath my well-honed personal alert system. I thought it important to post it immediately. Tom
United Colors of America
By Rebecca SolnitAugust 15, 2004: Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced today that the nation was on lilac alert with a cream overwash after reports that forces in the military were refusing to bomb civilian targets in Iraq. “Sources tell us that they claim such activity would be ugly,” said Ridge, adding that such a position was clearly the work of homosexuals carrying out the mandate of Al Qaeda. He further charged that certain members of the military consider the depleted-uranium-clad armored personnel carriers to be an ugly green. “We’re a primary-colored nation,'” said Ridge. “People who don’t like those colors have no right to be here. Or there, for that matter.” Asked why homosexuals would work for Al Qaeda, the President said from Pentagon headquarters in Crawford, Texas, “Contrary to what you are hearing from them, these sneaky attempts to muddle the American people will not be amolarated by us. We are not emulsifiers, and we stand firm on that position.”
September 2, 2004: Citing a possible conspiracy to spread the influenza virus throughout the United States via the nation’s daycare facilities, the Bush Administration has placed the nation on a ducky-yellow and baby-blue alert. Congress is investigating allegations that the widespread movement to create daycare centers was a strategy by Al Qaeda agents posing as feminists, working mothers, and women in loose-fitting comfortable slacks in the aisles of Toys “R” Us to wage biological warfare against the productivity of the United States. Women fitting these descriptions have been taken into custody. Many were found carrying purses full of snuffly tissues and unwashed pacifiers that are being held as evidence.
September 23, 2003: The nation was placed on vibrant-verde-pistachio alert after reports that a substance found atop tacos in Phoenix may have been a chemical agent spread by terrorists seeking to weaken the nation’s resolve. Conflicting reports have emerged. Citing unidentified sources, reporter Cokie Roberts said that the substance may instead have been disguised as pistachio ice cream atop handmade waffle cones. Security has been tightened around hospitals and taquerias in the area, and the governor has called out the National Guard to supervise Arizonan snack-and-dessert decisions. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, an expert since the crisis posed to his administration by a suspect blob of guacamole on a Chicago sidewalk in the months after 9/11, has been called in as a consultant.
August 15, 2004: Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced today that the nation was on lilac alert with a cream overwash after reports that forces in the military were refusing to bomb civilian targets in Iraq. “Sources tell us that they claim such activity would be ugly,” said Ridge, adding that such a position was clearly the work of homosexuals carrying out the mandate of Al Qaeda. He further charged that certain members of the military consider the depleted-uranium-clad armored personnel carriers to be an ugly green. “We’re a primary-colored nation,'” said Ridge. “People who don’t like those colors have no right to be here. Or there, for that matter.” Asked why homosexuals would work for Al Qaeda, the President said from Pentagon headquarters in Crawford, Texas, “Contrary to what you are hearing from them, these sneaky attempts to muddle the American people will not be amolarated by us. We are not emulsifiers, and we stand firm on that position.”
September 2, 2004: Citing a possible conspiracy to spread the influenza virus throughout the United States via the nation’s daycare facilities, the Bush Administration has placed the nation on a ducky-yellow and baby-blue alert. Congress is investigating allegations that the widespread movement to create daycare centers was a strategy by Al Qaeda agents posing as feminists, working mothers, and women in loose-fitting comfortable slacks in the aisles of Toys “R” Us to wage biological warfare against the productivity of the United States. Women fitting these descriptions have been taken into custody. Many were found carrying purses full of snuffly tissues and unwashed pacifiers that are being held as evidence.
September 23, 2003: The nation was placed on vibrant-verde-pistachio alert after reports that a substance found atop tacos in Phoenix may have been a chemical agent spread by terrorists seeking to weaken the nation’s resolve. Conflicting reports have emerged. Citing unidentified sources, reporter Cokie Roberts said that the substance may instead have been disguised as pistachio ice cream atop handmade waffle cones. Security has been tightened around hospitals and taquerias in the area, and the governor has called out the National Guard to supervise Arizonan snack-and-dessert decisions. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, an expert since the crisis posed to his administration by a suspect blob of guacamole on a Chicago sidewalk in the months after 9/11, has been called in as a consultant.
In a separate matter, 7,452 Indian and Icelandic nationals, Iranians, Turks, Ibos and Inuit indigenous tribespeople were released from custody under a special bill passed by Congress this week, the “Au Pair Provision Act of 2004,” which seeks to remedy the nation’s childcare crisis with in-home care for those who can afford it. The immigrants had been incarcerated during the Christmas season’s crimson crisis, which focused on people from countries that either bordered Iraq or began with the letter “I.” Saudi citizens in the US had been exempted under the Very Special Relationship, Emulsifiers and Emolients Act.
October 2, 2004: Citing a newly potent conspiracy to undermine the stability of the administration by asking inappropriate questions about an array of national security and human rights matters, Homeland Security Department officials have placed the nation on a smudgy-black-and-white alert with front-page color. A number of female news columnists, otherwise due to be kept under observation during this alert, had fortunately already been detained under the ducky-yellow and baby-blue alert, while six reporters documenting Donald Rumsfeld’s link to secret prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Uzbekistan have been held under the new Wartime Treason Act.
October 27, 2004: As America moves into the second week of a public color-palette crisis at the edge of a presidential election, experts convened in an emergency round-table conference at the White House to determine what color the current alert should be raised to. Former employees of the Martha Stewart empire held to their position that it should move to a sort of raw sienna with a warm pumpkin-y color around the edges and argued with Condoleezza Rice that it was an alert far more harmonized to harvest time than early spring. Several security guards from Home Depot, brought in because miscommunications between the FBI and CIA led them to be identified as “Homeland Security color-coding experts,” opined that it was really more of a taupe-beige-cream crisis, possibly the interior latex color called Charleston Bisque. From political asylum in Burkina Faso, Martha Stewart sent a message stating that “I cannot countenance calling sienna what is clearly an Umbrian ochre-umber.” Court-martialed prisoners from the August lilac crisis were offered early release if they would testify about the color issue. They released a statement that they still think bombing civilian populations is ugly.
November 1, 2004: The nation has shifted from late last week’s aubergine-chartreuse fashion crimes alert to a brown alert after investigators with the FBI uncovered a “vast and spreading conspiracy” on the part of immigrants to become citizens, register to vote, and vote for the people who best represent their interests. Tomorrow’s election will be suspended indefinitely.
Rebecca Solnit is the author of Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities and seven other books, including the award-winning River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
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Copyright C2004 Rebecca Solnit