The Evil Petting Zoo

Do certain political pundits and reporters have something done to them before they go public? Do they have a special kind of lobotomy? Are they made to read the Necronomicon and have their sanity damaged? Do they have brains sucked out and replaced with alien parasites that have had no interaction with humanity and thus have no idea how human society works?

In case you've missed this latest controversy, Obama misspoke at a family function on Memorial Day and claimed that his uncle, when serving in World War II, had helped to liberate Auschwitz; in fact, it was Obama's grand-uncle, and he had helped to liberate Buchenwald, not Auschwitz. Of course, that didn't stop some commentators from trying to drive a Swift Boat into Obama's campaign, at least, until true patriots called them out for acting like wastes of skin.

But, of course, when you've already hit bottom, the only true way to go is to dig deeper. Which is why Fox and Friends, when covering the story, kept claiming that Buchenwald was just a work camp, not the death camp that Auschwitz was.

"Just" a work camp.

"Just" a work camp.

"Just" a place where Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and others were herded by the Third Reich to produce something of worth before their inevitable extinction. "Just" a place where their corpses were turned into soap, blankets, and lampshades. "Just" a place where they were subjected to horrific medical experiments. But hey, it wasn't Auschwitz!

What goes through these people's minds? What bizarre alien thought processes produce these statements, things no American -- hell, things no person -- would say it all seriousness? What leads to someone ascribing utter political importance to bowling scores and mistakes about which gear of the Nazi death machine one's great-uncle knocked off? What madness leads people to try to crucify someone for the honorable military service of their great-uncle?

And we still have five more months to go. I can't wait to see what depths this campaign season has to reach.