The News Is So Bad Even "Funny Links" Don't Work

Andrew Sullivan, today:

I pass along the following pieces of grim news simply out of a duty to notice them. A reader told me today that he could no longer read the blog because it was so depressing. I try and cheer it up with funny links, videos, the windows series, and so on. But the news from the great struggle of our time is currently pretty grim. We have the worst rioting in Afghanistan since the liberation; we have news of possibly the worst American atrocity of the war in Haditha; we have Anbar province going backwards not forwards in Iraq; we have basic infrastructure in Iraq deteriorating; we have a massive hunger-strike at Gitmo; and we have a collapse of morale at home. There are ways to hope; and there is a case for patience. But this blog, unlike some others, is not into denial. [Emphasis added]

Depends on how you define 'denial', I guess. And not quite as bad as the Barbara Bush 'beautiful mind' quote, against which all other demonstrations of any lack of understanding of and/or concern for the extent of the current nightmare in Iraq and elsewhere must be measured:

But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

-- Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America," March 18, 2003