President Bush just gave his last news conference at the White House this morning and the sense of relief among the press corps was palpable, even on television. There was a smattering of applause as he left the podium for the last time, the kind you get after some interminable three-act Broadway show that can’t decide if it’s a tragedy or a comedy. Fitting, in that he answered one question about America’s damaged moral standing by saying that, even in the darkest days of Iraq when casualties were stacking up like cords of wood, “Every day has been joyous.”

I wish I could say I was kidding. He joshed with the press a lot, as when he finally pronounced Suzanne Malveaux‘s name correctly, “She used to be Suzanne, now she’s Su-zahn,” as if it was her fault that he couldn’t pronounce her name correctly for the last eight years. Which pretty much sums up his whole administration. 

He said he was “disappointed” that there weren’t weapons of mass destruction, and that whole Abu Ghraib thing was a disappointment, too. As if those prisoners who were tortured and ridiculed had somehow let him down. As far as the economy went (down, down, down the tubes): “I inherited a recession and I’m ending on one…

“This problem started before my presidency,” he said, just like the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which his administration had “worked hard” to deal with. Some problems are just too big, it seems. And when asked about the enormous enmity he had engendered (Bush Derangement Syndrome is what Charles Krauthammer called it), he was very forgiving. “In times of war, people get emotional,” he said. “I understand that.” 

Probably the biggest news was his assessment of himself as a “type A personality” — “I can’t picture myself sitting around in a straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt — especially since I quit drinking.” Funny, that’s just how most people do picture him, all the time. Still, he said, “When I get out of here, I’m getting off the stage.”

Someone strike the set. And open the stage doors, while you’re at it. We need some air in here. 

Being a little sick again I was able to watch the top of the news on NBC, ABC and CBS this evening and the lead story on all three networks was the unemployment figures released today — 7.2%, a 16-year high with attendant grim figures (13% “underemployment,” meaning part time workers and folks out of work who have just given up; smaller work-week hours).  

On ABC, Charlie Gibson sought a silver lining with a secondary report on who is hiring: the nursing profession needs workers. Yes, boomers, you too can start taking of other people’s parents, if you’re not busy taking care of your own. Who will be taking care of you is anybody’s guess. 

This shock to the economic system pushed the news from Gaza (where calls for a cease fire were rebuffed by Israel and Hamas alike) below the fold; it was about ten minutes into Gibson’s show that he announced the new numbers: 810 Palestinian dead, 16 Israelis and no, that’s not a typo. For real coverage of the war in Gaza you need to tune into Al Jazeera English, which has been effectively blocked in nearly every US market. 

I’m not saying the conflict there should be of greater concern to us than the looming threat of another depression. But the indifference of Americans to the plight of innocent women and children being killed, albeit accidentally, by Israeli troops is depressing in a different way. That’s a situation we could actually do something about if we raised our voices (as thousands have across Europe and the Middle East). All we can do about our tanking economy is hang on and pray. 

There is another growth industry in the US: suicide hotlines are ringing off the hook, and people are needed to take those calls. It doesn’t pay, of course. 

Among the defenders of Israel’s incursion into Gaza, which began with shelling the area last week, you are sure to hear Hamas described as cowards. They are firing rockets into towns in southern Israel from within the tightly packed Palestinian enclave (home to 1.5 million people) and hiding behind the skirts of their women, they will say.  The Israeli army, sensitive to its nation’s image abroad as hospitals in Gaza fill up with wounded civilians, issued a statement reminding the world that “the Hamas terrorist organization operates among civilians, using them as human shields.”

No doubt. Just as Hezbollah did during the ’06 Israel-Lebanon war, Hamas is clearly hoping that Israel would not be so indiscriminate in its retaliation for the ongoing rocket strikes when women and children were at risk. (Whoops!) The imagery is meant to invoke the bad guy at the end of a million movies and TV shows who uses a woman or a child as a hostage. “One move and the kid gets it!”

Except in those dramas the good guy stands down; he does not blast away, making a pink mist of the innocent bystanders. Of the 500 reported Palestinian deaths to date, over 100 have been civilians, and of the thousands injured the collateral damage is even greater. Amputations are rampant as families searching for loved ones are also left to search through the rubble for missing limbs. 

Nothing about the nation of Israel — not its special status as US friend, not its history, not the Holocaust — allows them to react as disproportionately as they are now. Before the assault began last week the rocket fire had yielded no casualties. Now Israeli soldiers have begun to fall (only one casualty as of this posting) and more surely will. But the killing won’t stop there. As a Hamas leader promised,  “The Zionists have legitimized the killing of their children by killing our children. They have legitimized the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”

Bring out your dead. 

My favorite story of 2008 may have been one that occurred 37 years ago. Last week the National Security Archive published online transcripts of phone conversations beloved war criminal Henry Kissinger had back in the Nixon days. It seems that everyone was covertly taping each other then, creating a sort of aural house of mirrors effect, because each was convinced (correctly) that the other was taping the conversation as well. Trust is a beautiful thing. 

One day in 1971, Kissinger took a call from Allen Ginsberg. The poet, who had tried to levitate the Pentagon as far back as 1967 and was still prone to playing finger cymbals and chanting at any anti-war event of a certain magnitude, wanted to have a meeting, brokered by Eugene McCarthy, to talk about Vietnam. “Perhaps you don’t know how to get out of the war,” he told the secretary of state, not unreasonably. 

Whether sincere or not, Kissinger said he was open to such a powwow. “I like to do this,” he said, “not just for the enlightenment of the people I talk to, but to at least give me a feel of what concerned people think.”

“It would be more useful if we could do it naked on television,” Ginsberg suggested. 

The transcript records that Kissinger laughed. Ginsberg said he could be reached at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, and that he had just attended a gay rights demonstration. That’s right: in 1971.

I am trying now to imagine what contemporary poet would make such a suggestion to Condoleeza Rice. I am trying to imagine her taking the call. 

By way of a sign-off Ginsberg said, “You may have to subject yourself to prayer.”

What’s more surprising was Kissinger’s reply: “That is a private matter that is permissible.” 

Naked or not, the meeting never happened. 

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life was not always the staple of Christmas television viewing it is now. Time was, even though rights to air the 1946 film had lapsed into the public domain, no one seemed to think it quite as inspiring as A Charlie Brown Christmas, say, of The Wizard of Oz. 

But that all changed in the last twenty years. At some point Zuzu’s petals and all that became synonymous with yuletide cheer, despite the attempted suicide and endless home renovation depicted in the story of George Bailey (I see a causal relationship between the two!). And like the much maligned fruit cake, Frank Capra’s fable of small town life is now ready for its backlash. 

Consider last week’s piece in the New York Times that mentions the home reno and blanket of compromise that hangs over George Bailey’s thwarted dreams — the poor guy just can’t leave Bedford Falls! The essay’s author, Wendell Jamieson, called it “a terrifying asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams.” Okay, Jamieson’s tongue is slightly in his cheek (anyone who mentions the Clash in this context can’t be all bad). But it speaks to the pernicious holiday impulse to always ask for More, to look every gift in its proverbial mouth and say, So this is all I’m worth to you?

I first saw It’s A Wonderful Life when I was in my twenties, and already well acquainted with life’s disappointments. I saw George Bailey’s ultimate acceptance of his fate, and final acknowledgment of all the lives he had touched, as profoundly existential, despite all the God and angel business. Like Camus’ Sisyphus, he learns to love pushing that stone up the hill, knowing it will roll back down again. It never actually crushes you. “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth,” wrote Camus. Consider that as you contemplate the meaning of Christmas.