Can New Year’s resolutions be meaningful given the ersatz nature of calendars? While I’m not personally equipped to address the issue as I’ve always utilized the deficits of others as a measure for self-improvement, I can say this: The practice of segmenting reality does impose an arbitrary order on human endeavors. Even patently disparate systems (Gregorian, Chinese, Hebrew) produce a universal compulsion to hit the reset button. In other words, the water in the Ganges need not be clean on order to cleanse. Nonetheless, writing ’04 on my checks means something’s changed and though it’s early, this year’s theme has begun to appear. Duplicity. Or as Donovan put it, “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”

First, Gray Davis gave driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, then Arnold Schwarzenegger took them away, then George Bush gave them back. With the election looming, the President is working tirelessly to promote our new zeitgeist. An unabashed free-trader, Bush imposed steel tariffs only to rescind them after Dick Cheney got a slug of the International Steel Group IPO (up 25% out of the gate) and polls showed increased approval ratings in the key states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. After declaring that, “These safeguard measures have achieved their purpose,” W. changed course, targeting the venality of UAW officials in Michigan. Not constrained by any domestic agenda, Bush flew to Baghdad and carted around a plastic Thanksgiving turkey. Though the holidays are over, the polystyrene bird remains an apt symbol of the impotent anti-missile defense system the administration is beginning to deploy. Early tests of radar-guided interceptor missiles, while admittedly rigged, still showed the system to be deeply flawed and unreliable. But when has efficacy ever shaped policy over at Homeland Security?

Just ask Tom Ridge who (again) raised the terror alert to orange only to (again) restore it to yellow after it failed to protect Britney Spears’ marital status. Or the legacy of Senator Strom Thurmond. The Stromster, you may recall, ran for President in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket, promoting a policy of strict racial segregation. Astonishingly, he carried four states and, as it turns out, fathered a child with his mother’s black maid. Apparently, the doctrine of non-fraternization didn’t extend all the way to his genitals.

In addition to changing the hue of Fox’s news crawl, Ridge told an anxious nation that the greatest threat to our wellbeing isn’t hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan, but rather hails from Vern’s Meat Company in Moses Lake, Washington. After decades of having their tits sucked dry, or worse, being chopped up and eaten, cows have understandably become mad. From Holstein to Pinzgauer, cattle want revenge. Despite the NRA’s strenuous lobbying efforts, assault rifles were abandoned (hooves and triggers being incompatible) in favor of bio-terrorism. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy is an insidious, if fatal disease. It is colorless, odorless and cloaks itself during years of silent incubation after which your brains slop out of your nose like shaving cream.

Unless you’re Michael Jackson who’s nasal privation means his cerebellum will ooze through that plastic triangle in the middle of his face like green Play-Doh extruded from the Fun Factory. And what better punishment for a child molester? Allegedly. Jackson defended himself on “60 Minutes” by telling Ed Bradley, “Before I would hurt a child, I would slit my wrists.” While this may explain the excessive amount of lubricant recovered by the Santa Barbara Sheriff in the course of their Neverland raid, the ex-pop star remained defiant, saying, “I am not going to do anything sexual to a child. That’s not Michael Jackson.” Well, neither was the white guy with long stringy hair we saw on TV. More like some drifter from Barstow with a large pocketknife or Jim Varney in “Earnest goes to Jail”.

Everything is shifting; even venerable CBS is no longer as it was. Having crossed the line of paying for news access (Jackson granted the interview as a quid pro quo for airing his once-shelved musical retrospective “Number One”), the erstwhile geriatric network is now using pedophilia to boost ratings in the all-important 18 – 34 demographic. One Studio City executive rationalized the move, observing that if Paris Hilton can anchor a hit series about slopping hogs in the wake of her internet porn video it is only a matter of time before cable starts in with pay-per-view programs featuring Catholic Priests and Air Force cadets. Maybe this year I’ll commit to programming my TiVo.