Abe Does the Old "Take One for the Team" Trick

As in Shinzo, not Lincoln. (For those keeping score, the current head honcho of Japan, not the 19th C US head honcho who did not quite equate dissent with treason, as those who do now had rather hopefully claimed, with their usual judiciousness, foresight, and concern for truthiness.)

You see, Abe-san claimed a few days ago that there's no evidence the Japanese military forced the "comfort women" of World War II into being repeatedly raped by its soldiers across East and Southeast Asia, sparking outrage in and rebuttals from both Koreas, China, and the Philippines. So why would he basically accuse the comfort women of being prostitutes now, as Japan gears up for bilateral negotiations with North Korea? This wouldn't be the secret hideout of the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party if we couldn't link this burgeoning international controversy to WAAGNFNP wannabe Dick Cheney. Here's the way it works (I'd write this up as Completely Invented Dialogue, but I always turn the channel when I happen to see Bush or Cheney's face on the tee-vee these days, so my ability to do impressions has sadly atrophied from its so-called-peak Mr. "I pity the fool" T junior high school years).

The Dick Cheney Mordor Mystery Tour (coming soon to an undisclosed location near you) arrives in Japan not so long ago but gives a shorter-than-usual concert in which it does a terrible cover of the Abe administration's smash hit, "Our Obsession with North Korean Abductions of a Few Dozen Japanese Citizens a Few Decades Ago Trumps Your Obsession with Our Atrocities in Korea over the First Half of the Twentieth Century," leading many to wonder if the (I)rock criticism of Japan's top defense and foreign ministry officials a little longer ago had jeopardized the very special relationship between our conservatives and theirs (re: Gavan McCormack, known to me from his recent Japan Focus essay, read "client state," the title of his forthcoming Verso book on the subject). Behind the scenes, Cheney assigns Abe a little test, which amounts, as Maxwell Smart would have put it (and what is it with me giving Oaktown Girl more mockery-fodder in this post for my lack of pop culture taste?!--it's a good thing she hasn't caught my cleverly-disguised Knight Rider allusion yet, although to give her credit it may or may not depend on a mispronunciation of a certain cult Party's emeritus leader's name--d'oh! I've parenthesized too much), to "The Old Take One for the Team Trick."

Yup, Abe-san is trying to make the Cheney-Bush administration look good. It's a tough job (read JP's latest--and don't miss the comments--although certain commenters should follow his example and exercise the privileges of the Mostly Harmless author-function, since not even Floating Head Professor could get his regular readers to read comments at his more-virtual-than-thou blog, so don't expect "a 'insignificant microbe'" of a blog to get its even more virtual regular readers to do it...I'm talking to you, Silko!), but somebody's gotta do it (and I'm not talking about run-on parentheses, although somebody's gotta do that, too).

[Update: Just for Oaktown Girl, more fun with Star Wars, courtesy of generous linker robotnik, who really should do a Fulbright in Japan. And just for Adrian, more BerubeWatch (now with one link per word). You won't hear any "I told you so"s from Mostly Harmless. Nosireebob--don't look at comment #75. Nothing to see there. Move it along, people.]