knee-jerk

Hmm. That's an uncannily familiar scene, isn't it? Paris, Texas? Austin on the Seine?

What's that? You want more uncanniness? More strange in the familiar's dress, more already-known masquerading as the unfathomable and, well, fucked up? Got it:

From the NY Times today:

Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, told CNN on Sunday, “It would be nice to have someone who’s head of France who doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction against the United States.”

Now wait a minute, Chuck. When we, as Americans, mention a French "knee-jerk reaction," we really mean only one thing, right? And that thing - we agree now that it was a colossal mistake, at this point. We're going to run in '08 on the fact that, well, it was a clusterfuck from the start, n'est-ce pas?

You have to give it to the US Dems - when it comes to courage of conviction, they possess the rigidity of a crack yoga teacher. In the face of the criminally obvious and the obviously criminal, their knees don't jerk, but rather gracefully swim and swoon and sway, only to buckle and drop elegantly but resolutely to the floor.