A Summer of Great Irony
Weekly commentary by CBS Evening News anchor and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer.
It was hard to miss the irony. Some guy who thinks he's Peter Pan gets arrested in Thailand and it looks like the Jon Benet Ramsey case has finally been solved.
Then the Peter Pan guy confesses and people say the case is falling apart. Now that's a first. A suspect confesses and seems to help, rather than hurt, himself.
Makes you wonder if the courts should stop making cops warn suspects that anything they say may be held against them.
In this summer of great irony, maybe we shouldn't be surprised.
Take the war in Lebanon. The Lebanese Hezbollah group starts a war that leaves most of its country in ruins, then declares victory and now seems to be winning the hearts and minds of the homeless by handing out money — in some cases, U.S. dollars — to rebuild their bombed out homes.
I remember the time during Vietnam when U.S. forces leveled a village and an American officer said, "we had to destroy the village to save it."
In Lebanon, that strategy actually seemed to have worked — at least on many of the people.
The Middle East is a poor example because nothing there ever comes out quite the way we expect, but this summer, right or wrong, everything seems to be coming out backwards.
I mean, put aside the arguments about who is the best candidate and just consider this: how do you become an overwhelming favorite to win reelection to the Senate from Connecticut? This summer, the answer seems to be — lose your party's primary.
It's some summer.
By Bob Schieffer