Can you remember what was dominating the news back on September 10, 2001?

We were obsessed with Gary Condit and his missing aide, Chandra Levy. The blathering heads were discussing the growing irrelevancy, ineffectiveness and pointlessness of the Bush administration, that he was destined to be a one-term president and that history would shroud him in obscurity. Ah, how we long for those simpler times.

Fast forward eight years, and we're just coming off a another string of juicy political sex scandals and the Michael Jackson beatification. And oh, yeah...most of us are either hurtling into the economic abyss or staring over the edge. That is, unless we work for Goldman, Sachs. In that case, we're looking forward to an average bonus in the $800,000 range. But that's a topic for another cartoon.

Anyway, the War On Terror seems like ancient history compared to the hummingbird flight that is the American national attention span. It's about as remote from our daily concerns as it was...back on September 10, 2001.