Bhutto Defeats Truman

Yeah, this was a really insane moment of my Sunday morning:

I’m here to report that when I brought in the local paper from the front porch this morning, I found that the cover story on this week’s Parade was all about Benazir Bhutto. (Parade, for those of you who don’t get the thing, is the standard Sunday supplement in run-of-the-mill newspapers in the deep interior of my continent.) The cover asks, “Is Benazir Bhutto America’s best hope against al-Qaeda?” This struck me as a somewhat strange question, and not simply because of the recent tendency in these parts to treat Bhutto as Pakistan’s Greatest Democrat Ever. The story itself begins on page six, under the headline “A Wrong Must Be Righted – As Benazir Bhutto seeks a return to power, Tuesday’s election in Pakistan could profoundly affect the fight against terrorism.” Well, I was going to say, I hope you people in other countries will stop complaining about how American news media don’t cover foreign things from far away! But, of course, Parade’s web site is a bit more current:

Editor’s note: The assassination of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27 occurred after PARADE’s Jan. 6 issue went to press.

Oooo-kay, but it seems to me you could have pulled it from the Sunday editions, no? I mean, considering that there was a two-week head start and all.

UPDATE: Just to make this nominally about Pakistan, the sale of 18 new F-16s to them at a time of utter turmoil seems to me like a bad idea.

Having an interview from someone who's been dead two weeks and acting like she's alive seems like a gaffe you really don't want in your paper, at least to me.