MoDo Let's Fly

tbe Progressive American:

As USA Today noted about summer movies, the hot trend in heroines 'is not the damsel in distress. It's the damsel who causes distress.'

Uma, Oprah. Oprah, Condi.

The more W. and his tough, by-any-means-necessary superbabe have tried to tame the Middle East, the more inflamed the Middle East has become. Now the secretary of state is leaving, reluctantly and belatedly, to do some shuttle diplomacy that entails little diplomacy and no shuttling. It's more like air-guitar diplomacy.

Condi doesn't want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran; 'Syria knows what it needs to do,' she says with asperity, and she doesn't want a cease-fire. She wants 'a sustainable cease-fire,' which means she wants to give the Israelis more time to decimate Hezbollah bunkers with the precision-guided bombs that the Bush administration is racing to deliver.

'I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do,' she said.

Keep more civilians from being killed? Or at least keep America from being even more despised in the Middle East and around the globe?

Like Davy Jones, the octopus-headed creature who had to keep sailing Flying Dutchman-like without getting to land in the new 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' Condi had a hard time finding an Arab port in which to dock.