The Things I Want to Forget

By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet. Posted December 23, 2005.

The older I get, the more I'm convinced that the key to happiness is starting every day, if you can, with a clean slate. But it should certainly be done before the start of every new year. This task is particularly easy for me this year since forgetfulness seems to come along with the Bora Bora breeze here.

So here is my list of things from 2005 that I'd love to forget -- that, indeed, we'd all be better off if they never crossed our minds again:

• Bill Frist, video diagnostician. Bill Frist, stock market genius. Bill Frist.
• That drivers will soon have to take out a second mortgage before filling up at the gas pump.
• Bill O'Reilly's enemies list. That I wasn't on it (we'll try harder next year).
• That the president thought Harriet Miers was the most qualified candidate for the Supreme Court.
• That Harriet Miers thought George Bush was the most brilliant man she'd ever met.
• The passage of the morally bankrupt bankruptcy bill.
• That the New York Times held off running the NSA spying story for over a year.
• Being Bobby Brown: "Hell to the no!"
• The note President Bush passed Condoleezza Rice, asking if it was OK to take a bathroom break during a U.N. Security Council meeting.
• The missing $9 billion the U.S.-led occupation government in Iraq can't account for.
• Jeff Gannon, White House correspondent -- aka Jeff Guckert, hotmilitarystud.com.
• That there is a debate about whether waterboarding is actually torture.
• Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Viveca Novak: The Three Media Stooges of Plamegate.
• The Fred Durst sex tape.
• That 493 U.S. soldiers have died since Dick Cheney declared the insurgency was in its "last throes."
• That Dick "Five Deferments" Cheney was willing to go toe-to-toe with John "Five Years as a POW" McCain over the issue of torture.
• Jean Schmidt taking to the House floor and implying that Jack Murtha was a "coward."
• That voters could have gone to the polls in 2004 knowing that Bush was spying on Americans, that a key White House aide was charged with felonies, and that the initial reasons for invading Iraq were bogus -- but didn't, thanks to the timidity of the mainstream media.
• Tom Cruise vs. Brooke Shields
• Tom Cruise vs. Matt Lauer
• Tom Cruise vs. Oprah's couch
• That, in a '60s flashback, the Pentagon is once again spying on the activities of anti-war activists.
• Hillary Clinton's shameless attempts to rebrand herself as a red-state-friendly Democrat -- including her decision to sign on as a co-sponsor of an anti-flag burning bill.
• Hillary's visit to Iraq, where when she opined that suicide bombers are "an indication" of the "failure" of the insurgency, and that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well."

Find more Arianna at the Huffington Post.

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