Can't We Send Him Back

Can’t We Send Him Back To Canada?
Because I enjoy a cruel laugh (out of a sense of sadism or out of masochism — probably the former), I subscribed yesterday to Peter Jennings‘ daily email note.

Here’s the lede from this afternoon’s update:

Peter Jennings will report from the Arab League summit in Beirut, Lebanon, where there is a growing sense that, despite all the wrangling, almost every Arab country is prepared to have normal relations someday with Israel. While the Arab League was meeting, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in an Israeli beach town, killing more than a dozen people on the first night of Passover.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who noticed the disconnect between the first and second sentence. There’s not even an implied sense of detached irony. Let’s re-write that story in family terms everyone can understand:

“Tonight during the Green Household Chores Meeting, a long discussion led to the virtually unanimous agreement that Steve should take out the trash. In an unrelated story, Steve threw garbage all over the kitchen and took a dump on the dining room table during dinner.”

Might I suggest the Vietnam solution to saving network news? You know, that “we saved the village by destroying it” technique.