Men in Powerful Positions Tumbling

From Amazon.com, Description of Vonnegut's Jailbird:

Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government...and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentary as Watergate's least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.

Hmmm, appropos of nothing in particular.

One of the chief policy makers on the Iraq thing (read disaster), Paul Wolfowitz, is in the headlines not for any of the terrible things that have happened over in the Middle East but rather for sexual misconduct, or rather for substantially increasing the salary of someone with whom he is romantically involved. Hmmm.

One of the commentators on the human condition (or at least he has a radio show, and tv too), Don Imus, in trouble for the way he has described a group of very succesful college women, the Rutgers women's basketball team, which just finished second in the NCAA tournament. Back when I was young, youngsters heard a lot of "Watch your tongue" and "You'll get your mouth washed out with soap". Guess things are different nowadays. Well, maybe not: he's been taken out to the woodshed through the back door.

On the lighter side: Kurt Vonnegut's "so it goes" was picked up by Linda Ellerbee which is where I remember it - one of her early news shows. Now I see she titled one of her books with the phrase. Always liked her, a maverick, like Vonnegut.