the commune Focus: Teen Mind-Control

n efforts to control crime and young minds in the past decade, many cities have followed the move of small towns to institute curfews and keep young people off the street. As part of the commune's ongoing attempt to bring you closer to the world around you, the issues presented to the American public, and eventually get you to buy our sociological journals, the commune brings you the commune Focus: Teen Curfews and Other Forms of Mind-Control.

Most recently, the town council of Vernon, Connecticut, some kind of state in the country, decided not to appeal a federal court ruling upholding a ban on their longtime teen curfew. Teens everywhere celebrated by playing X-Box, using swear words, and having unprotected sex in between backyard wrestling matches. The town council vowed to do nothing until hearing which way the parental outrage swung.

The ban on the town curfew came after ACLU (ack-loo) lawyers challenged the law on the premise it was written in Spanish. That having failed, the ACLU then challenged on behalf of parents' rights to set their own children's curfews, and then challenged on the idea it violated the rights of children themselves, best two out of three, but the court bit on the second suit.

The ruling could dissuade other pompous town council people in Footloose-type situations from passing legislation taking away the rights of anybody under the age of 21. Other issues in controlling teen thought are in dangerous territory with the frown on teen curfews, including a legal drinking age of 21, school uniforms, and chemical castration (for boys only).

"It's very important teens learn restraint in social situations," said Child Psychology professor Fett Geraldo, an ancient prick far too old to have any fun anymore. "Children lack the same wizened social skills and experience to make decisions of importance for themselves like what to wear and what time to come in, whether to obey their parents or not. I know you're thinking people once said that about women and non-white people, but I assure such assessments are only mostly accurate. Anyone under the age of eighteen, or twenty-one, if we're talking alcohol, is clearly not mature enough to make decisions for himself. Or herself. Hell, look at all these teen websites for just-turned-eighteen girls, you can see what I mean."

This reporter did look at the websites, and was quite impressed by Dr. Geraldo's point. And the flexibility of one particular Ukrainian girl.

Teens, however, were demonstrably pissed off by the professor's opinion, and modern music.

"This is just another example of one group claiming they know what's best for another," said seventeen-year-old Betty Fullback. "But I know what's best for them—just shut up already. Adults always think young people can't make decisions about anything, and it's stupid. It's just like the sixties—I hear. We need to mobilize and rebel and stuff, to get our rights like the African-Americans did in the 1600s. I'm trying to get some people together at my house this weekend, so if you know anybody who's interested in fighting for their rights, just—as long as I have approval, you know. Let me check the list. I'm on student council, you know, I have some respect to maintain."

Consequently, this reporter found himself uninvited from the party after a lewd pass and a little commune name-dropping.

ollowing former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay's admission pre-war intelligence was practically "all wrong," officials in the Bush administration came forward with announcements everyone was, ostensibly, "shocked."

Staff members ranking as high as the vice president and "president" issued statements on how "shocked" (quote-unquote) everyone in government was about the lack of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Press secretary Scott McClellan said the president himself sort of "dismayed" and "curious" about the "failure" of prewar intelligence. When asked by reporters if the White House planned a probe into the intelligence problem, McClellan restrained a smile and promised someone would get on that "right away."

Conservative news agencies posed questions to McClellan on how the president viewed intelligence and homeland security in the wake of the discovery, while more liberal news agencies questioned the press secretary on the legitimacy of the Iraq war if intelligence has proven faulty. Meanwhile, in the back of the room, one man screamed at the top of the lungs that the president knew, of course he knew, goddammit, everyone in the administration had to have known and they rode into the fucking White House looking for the first excuse to head into Iraq with guns blazing just like daddy did, Jesus Christ, has everyone else on the fucking planet gone so deaf and blind they can't even see the president's a lousy fucking liar? But McClellan did not take questions at that time.

Statements from the White House were seen by many as damage control after Kay's Wednesday admission to a congressional committee early Iraq intelligence claiming Saddam Hussein was developing a program of weapons of mass destruction (or WMD, as the kids are saying) was incorrect. Kay described the "lapse" as a massive intelligence failure, and painted the president as much a victim of the fuck-up as the hundreds of Iraqis lying dead under rubble and blown up by landmines.

"Boy, did we screw the pooch on this one," laughed Kay, to an unforgiving congressional audience. "Yikes. Tough room. But seriously, folks, you know who we should give it up for? Mr. Bush. That's right, the president. I know it's not popular to say so, but I think he's doing a bang-up job and plainly he just wanted to do the right thing and had no idea how shitty this intelligence was. Really, we're talking Pig Latin intelligence or something. Waaaay off, no kidding. I think they were even in Iceland—hey! You gotta give me that one. C'mon. Show the love."

Friday Bush followed the administration's campaign for getting over this as quick as possible by releasing an official statement ripe with quotation marks.

"Obviously we would have done things 'differently' if the intelligence had been more accurate. Assuming that it was accurate—I still say, really, there's no way of telling if anybody's got weapons of mass destruction on them or not. You can hide them anywhere. I've got mustard gas, hidden in a tree house from when I was 12 years old, little gift from dad, nobody ever found it. You telling me Saddam can't hide something in all of Iraq? But I'm getting off message here. We're obviously facing a 'failure' of intelligence here. Everybody here in this administration wants 'peace,' no one more so than me. But if I had it all to do over again, knowing the 'threat' Saddam Hussein poses to the world, I would have done things very much the same. Our 'coalition' in Iraq is 'ready' to 'hand over' the 'country' in the 'next few months,' give or take two or three years."

There are truly frightening times to be a Democrat. We're sort of at war, the economy sucks, and there's a man with the IQ of a salad fork in the White House, threatening against all rational comprehension to be reelected. And it seems unlikely any of the current Democratic challengers will be able to suavely slip their tongue into the voting public's ear the way Bill Clinton did in 1992. Some Democrats thought Howard Dean might be able to pull off the trick, until he slipped and accidentally stuck his tongue up Iowa's ass on mistake, and now nobody trusts or even wants to think about where that tongue has been.

So what now? Thank God for Clark, right? If you can't sweet talk your way into a girl's panties, it never hurts to wow 'em with a uniform, right? Chicks dig a man in uniform; it reminds us of being forcibly acquired by an invading army or something. It's all genetic memory, hard to argue with that. So good, Clark can run for president, kick Bush in his National Guard-deserting ass, and then we won't have to wonder if we're watching Spitting Image or You Can't Do that on Television every time we turn on a presidential speech. Cool.

(Though it is kind of funny to imagine W popping out of one of those lockers and telling a knock knock joke about Health Care.)

Not so fast. Turns out there's the slight problem of Clark not having any political experience, and contradicting himself more often than Wayne Campbell. Oh, and the only state he won is Oklahoma, which is worse than losing Oklahoma. I'm serious, have you ever been there? I'd ask for a recount if I were Clark.

So the General is out. What about John Edwards? Good looking, smooth talker, former trial lawyer. Wait a minute, former trial lawyer? Jeez. He might as well be Jewish. No way Middle America is voting for this guy.

Now Democrats are riding high on the "FUCK, I DON'T KNOW. KERRY?" ticket because it's so fun to see a Democrat winning all those states, almost as cool as seeing it in the actual election, only they don't have that cool cartoon map with the states changing color. Even if he loses to Bush in November, we can always harken back fondly to that time Kerry kicked the shit out of New Mexico.

Not that John Kerry is a bad guy, I just haven't been convinced he's not already dead. You've got to admit it would be pretty embarrassing to nominate a dead man as the Democratic presidential candidate. We'd never hear the end of that. Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to go through a VHS copy of the Thriller video frame by frame to make sure Kerry wasn't one of the zombies moonwalking in the background. He does look kind of familiar.

But Kerry should at least be able to challenge Bush on his military record, since apparently Kerry got mugged in Vietnam or something. Though if he does, he will run the risk of being totally ignored by the vile liberal media, which is so biased against Bush it has virtually ignored the fact that his entire tough-guy image is based on four years in the National Guard, which is the military equivalent of going to a party school and majoring in Sex Ed. Never mind that he never even bothered to show up for the fourth year, apparently too hung over to even be in the right state.

Perhaps the liberal media could relate to Bush's slacker predicament, since they didn't really feel like following up on the story after somebody on Bush's staff "found" a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom of some army guy's shoe. It was decided this proved Bush fulfilled all his military obligations against all other contradictory evidence, because somebody had written "W" somewhere on the paper. Either that or it was an "M," nobody could tell because it's hard to say which is the top edge of a piece of toilet paper.

So maybe Kerry should just drop the whole military angle and run on the platform that he's seen death, and now knows no fear. That's kinda cool, and he's got the face to make it work. Hell, he could say he's spent a weekend playing golf with death, I'd believe it. Though things could get a little dicey if Kerry bites the Prime Minister of Japan on the neck and eats out his brains or something down the road. Best to keep an eye out for that.

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