Two probes American as apple pie

If you understood just what that Super Bowl halftime show was supposed to be all about last Sunday night – or if, for that matter, you caught more than three words of what was being screeched into the microphones while assorted performers were desecrating the flag, grabbing their crotch or baring their breasts – you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Remember when the Super Bowl was about football, rather than grossly amped-up head-exploding halftime hawg wrassles catering to people who wouldn’t know a football from a hockey puck? Remember when more attention was paid to the game than to the multi-million dollar television ads that, though they may cause viewers to snort into their beer in appreciation of the sheer audacity, also leave many of them hard-pressed to determine the ad’s message, if any? If you do, then come revel with me in our old fogydom.

A friend in the advertising business once tried to convince me that the brilliant message in some of those avant-garde Super Bowl ads is that there is no message. I never bought it. Color me old school, but when some outfit spends $48 million, or whatever, for a 30-second advertising spot and never once mentions its product, relying instead on some sort of subliminal vibration to carry the day, the message seems clear enough: Look at me. I have more money than brains. Although not for long, pending the arrival of the bill for this dubious indulgence.

On the other hand, I suppose the advertiser’s response to such conjecture might coincide with that expressed in Thursday’s “Dilbert” comic strip. “Never listen to your customers. They were dumb enough to buy your product, so they have no credibility,” the Dogbert consultant character advises his client.

Considering the state of high dudgeon that the Federal Communications Commission is in just now concerning the snowballing obscenity-via-public-airwave thing, the Super Bowl halftime clutch-and-grab extravaganza was a government investigation waiting to happen, I suppose. Not that much will come of it, when all is said and done. Except that Justin Timberlake (the groper) and Janet Jackson (the grope-ee) in the infamous Boobs-R-Us halftime show-stopper that briefly captivated the tittering masses will have gotten the desired boost for their flagging careers. As will any opportunistic congressman who can dream up a way to project himself into the controversy.

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But enough about that. If anything is ancient history in the minuscule attention span of the American public it is last weekend’s controversy. Not to worry, however. On the theory that one good investigation going nowhere deserves another of equal value and similar destination – the more so in an election year – a humdinger is brewing in Washington.

President Bush reportedly will form an independent commission to investigate how his administration came to believe that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that posed a grave and immediate threat to the world, which was the reason cited for waging war on Iraq. To date, no such weapons have been found, and former top weapons inspector David Kay has told Congress he believes that none will be. He claims that the decision to go to war was based on flawed intelligence given the president.

As with all good political investigations made for prime-time television, this one will feature the party on the outs (Democrats) in the familiar role of barbarians at the gate maneuvering to gain political advantage vs. the party on the inside (Republicans) playing the traditional stonewalling obfuscators part in defense of the status quo.

As a sort of warmup act, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has testified before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, insisting it is too early to conclude that WMD will not be found in Iraq. Senate Democrats pressed the silver-tongued Rumsfeld to explain his assurances in September 2002 that he knew where Iraqi WMD were stored.

“What was the basis of the intel of those statements of certainty?” Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan demanded.

The Associated Press reported that Rumsfeld acknowledged that he had made it sound like he was talking about actual weapons, although he claimed he was referring to suspected weapons sites. The remark “probably turned out not to be what one would have preferred, in retrospect,” the defense secretary said, in one of his patented dodges. Translation: I know you believe you understand what you think I said. But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant…

The investigation thus seems off to a proper start. What the halftime show might bring is anyone’s guess.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward’s e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.