The Blog | Larry Gelbart: Waking Up is Hard to do | The Huffington Post

Waking up is hard to do.

So much harder than it used to be.

So hard to start the day gagging on a body count before breakfast.

So hard looking into the bathroom mirror, still trying to absorb the sight of so many lifeless bodies on the tube at the foot of my bed.

Who am I that I should still have the privilege of brushing my teeth?

After seeing the sight of so many who died while I slept?

Young men.

Mothers.

Five year-olds.

Infants who will never get that far.

Waking up, I delay for as long as I can pressing the remote. I resist having as my first view of yet another day what has become television's test pattern for the 21st century: a bunch of somebody's good guys slaughtering a bunch of somebody else's good guys.

And my guides and usherettes through all the carnage that cable chews on so voraciously: urban anchors in their L.L. Bean's, simultaneously reporting and upstaging file and vile footage of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and all of the red blood that threatens to soil my bedspread.

It gets harder and harder, waking up to learn what new leakings have revealed which of our lawmakers have been discovered breaking even more of our laws.

Harder and harder to restart the daily cycle of frustration, of fear and of anger - anger at those who never stop lying about how they have made the world a safer, less fearful place.

Harder and harder to shut out the noise of crashing pensions and the steady drumbeat of corporate criminality.

Harder and harder to accept being humped at the pump.

Even and ever-harder to endure one single day more of the three R's:

Rove.

Rice.

Rumsfeld.

(If you need another R, Richard is what our vice president was called before he chose to become a Dick.)

(Cheap shot? Less troublesome than a bad one - one who aims at a duck and hits a human being; one who aims at Afghanistan and maims the whole of Iraq.)

Hard waking up hoping: if we are lucky maybe some of us will be remembered as the good Germans at this nadir in the history of the late, great United States.

One nation under God?

Excuse me?

God sanctions torture?

God smiles down on signing statements?

Thou shalt not kill - wink, wink?

When asked what he considered the secret to happiness, Tennessee Williams replied: "Insensitivity, l guess."

By that standard, this White House has to be happiest administration ever.

If I thought any of those scumbags had an ounce of pity stowed away in their irremediable, falsely optimistic hearts, I would get down on my knees and beg them to give me back just a tenth of my former peace of mind. I would implore them to give me back my mornings.

If they'll just give me that, I'll take responsibility for the rest of the day.
So hard looking into the bathroom mirror, still trying to absorb the sight of so many lifeless bodies on the tube at the foot of my bed.

Who am I that I should still have the privilege of brushing my teeth?

After seeing the sight of so many who died while I slept?

Young men.

Mothers.

Five year-olds.

Infants who will never get that far.

Waking up, I delay for as long as I can pressing the remote. I resist having as my first view of yet another day what has become television's test pattern for the 21st century: a bunch of somebody's good guys slaughtering a bunch of somebody else's good guys.

And my guides and usherettes through all the carnage that cable chews on so voraciously: urban anchors in their L.L. Bean's, simultaneously reporting and upstaging file and vile footage of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and all of the red blood that threatens to soil my bedspread.

It gets harder and harder, waking up to learn what new leakings have revealed which of our lawmakers have been discovered breaking even more of our laws.

Harder and harder to restart the daily"