"The Last Week" - Commentary by Tony Seton

The Last Week

Now the latest from that wonderful week between Christmas and New Year’s when fathers chop up their families with the electric carving knife they got under the tree; nope, not this year. But there is a lot of news, which most people will miss because they’re so busy with the business of the holidays... specifically, re-gifting. In case you didn’t know, and I didn’t, that’s when you store-return what you received from Santa -- myriad electric carving knives, no doubt -- or you re-wrap them to give to an unsuspecting loved one, preferably not the original source.

Dominating the real news, however, the death toll from the Indian Ocean tsunami is rising, like the speeding digits on the national debt clock, as bodies are yielded by the sea and massive piles of rubble are redistributed. The death toll will probably exceed 100,000. A major relief effort is underway to provide for the survivors and to bury the dead, with great concerns for secondary disasters of disease due to the rotting corpses and lack of clean drinking water. The U.S. ponied up $15 million in aid, then doubled it. That’s about what we spend on Iraq every day before breakfast. And a startling example in terms of money, personnel, equipment and supplies of the waste of war.

In less significant news, Liza Minnelli went to the hospital after reportedly falling out of bed. We’ve all had nights like that, but she’s had a string of regretfully public stumbles, an ugly exit from a marriage and a court battle with a former bodyguard. A current bodyguard found her, got help when he couldn’t get her up, but one wonders who will stop her from following her mother.

Another question, what happens when an intellectual dies during the Bush administration? Susan Sontag moved on to her next life, and ya gotta think there wasn’t a single top official in Washington who had a clue to the films she starred in. It probably wouldn’t jog their memories that Sontag referred to herself a "besotted aesthete," an "obsessed moralist" and a "zealot of seriousness."

Finally, the weather has made a lot of news. A powerful cold front and Christmas Eve skies thick with snow put a major crimp in many reveling plans. Holiday travelers couldn’t get to where they were going. Many of them were stuck when the Comair computer went south and large numbers of U.S. Airways personnel -- possibly on a job action against the bankrupt airline -- called in sick.

We all hope the New Year will be better.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.