Bush leads Warriors over Sand Devils

I know that the war in Iraq is very serious, but let's take a time out to consider how a friend thinks that President Bush could better handle the PR side of it.

I was telling Del about Bush visiting Auburn University a couple of years ago. Bush started the speech with a big "War Eagle!," which is battle cry of the school's athletic teams. Of course, with that on film, guess what the athletic department now shows on the big matrix screen before the start of every game. It's almost enough to make an Alabama fan vote Democratic--but only almost.

This made Del think about how Bush could use sports concepts to increase public support--particularly for our mission in Iraq. Here's what he had to say. Keep in mind this is from Del, and not me. He's the weird one.

Maybe Bush's foreign policy would be more popular if he'd only thought to assign mascot names to the various countries. You know, like Iraq could be the "Sand Devils" and then we could be the--well, "War Eagles" actually would work, or maybe "Warrior Eagles." Journalists would be instructed to use sports metaphor. Instead of "A convoy squadron sustained heavy casualties today," we would hear, "Whoa, Bob! The offensive line just fell apart on that last drive, no question about it. Ahmed saw an opening and he went for it! That was almost a turnover!" etc.

Well, Del only saw the possibilities as it related to the military, and that makes sense seeing how football has field generals who attack opponents and drive into their territory with ground attacks and aerial assults. Particularly dangerous is the long bomb.

If the sports tie-in could be expanded so that I could get my news from ESPN or Turner Sports, then I could stay current on events and the baseball standings at the same time. We could have color commentaries by fun-loving guys like Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld cutting up with each other. I'd replace Bill Schneider with Charles Barkley, whose quotes are memorable and smarter.

Of course, though, we would have to keep the traditional media. Someone has to stick around to tell liberals what they want to hear.

Did I tell you that I have weird friends? Go blame them for this.