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Citizenship Readiness Exercises
for Newcomers to the American Empire

by Maurice Fitznuggly

Remember "reading readiness" in kindergarten, when you had to do simple graphic exercises to get your young mind ready to learn to de-code written English? The teacher would hand out pictures containing mistakes and you would have to figure out what was wrong.

Given the New World Order that has sprung from the minds of George W. Bush and his handlers, it's time for citizens and would-be citizens (whether voluntary or not) of the American Empire to learn how to properly de-code the images of our victorious leaders as they appear so frequently in the pliant media.

So fast are things changing (goodbye, Geneva Convention; goodbye, Kyoto Protocols; goodbye, Bill of Rights) that it behooves us all to be sure we are totally, acutely hip to the correct reading and interpretation of the signs and signifiers of the New World Order.

To help in this admittedly daunting task, we have assembled a few recent news photos, each of which has some minor imperfection in it. (No, Virginia, the media are NOT perfect... yet!)

Your job is to spot what's wrong in each photo.

Members of the administration, their families and loved ones, Log Cabin Republicans, lapsed Rotarians, and fundamentalist Christians of course will be wasting their time here. They know what's right by rote (and by Rove!). The rest of us would do well to brush up our citizenship sensitivities forthwith.

Note: Certain citizens of a blue-stocking bent mired in old-fashioned, 20th-century politics, so lacking in true media-savvy, may find some of the following images offensive. If you feel you are such a person, DO NOT proceed. What you see on the next pages--especially staring with Image No. 7a--will only upset you; you're better off going here, or here.

What's Wrong with This Picture? First Image >>

1. Washington Monument.
2. John Ashcroft.
3. Katherine Harris.
4. James Baker III.
5. Dick Cheney.
6. It's a Long, Long Way to Midland-Odessa.
7a. Karl Rove.
7b. Paul Wolfowitz.
8. Donald Rumsfeld.
9. George W. Bush.
10. George W. Bush.

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