James Lileks on the French Revolution

At least I’m not easily depressed. (Link goes to opinion piece about the author's disinclination to celebrate the fourth because of that whole "independence" thing, and desire for Darth Vader to speak truth to power at an Anti-Cheney rally that will use the power of Paris Hilton and rap stars to bring the nation together again. The author also wishes we would storm some sort of Bastille next week. I’ve noticed that most people who romanticize the French Revolution are a little unclear on the details, particularly how it turned out. They seem to think it resulted in two strokes of the guillotine – the king, who obviously deserved it, and Marie Antoinette, who kinda-sorta deserved it because she was disconnected from the people and said they should eat cake, tee hee. Bitch! (Unless you're holding her up as a victim of 18th century social norms imposed by the oligarchical phallocracy, in which case: Martyr!) The fact that it all dissolved into the worst sort of Utopian drivel, sectarian quarrles, nasty radical egalitarianism and the rise of ideologically-inspired state terror – well, yes, but they meant well. So did Vader, depending on your viewpoint. My favorite line:

Maybe we need Bono and Brad and Angelina there, to focus on the crisis in America and not the crisis in Africa, at least for a few months.

It's like a neutron star of inanity, that line; like a neutron star, it collapses into a dot so dense that the editor's pen is forever stuck on the event horizon, unable to move forward and cross it out.