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A Bunch of Krabby Patties
By
MAUREEN DOWD

I should have known.

I can't believe I thought he was just an innocent little sponge wearing
tight shorts.

What in the name of Davy Jones's locker would a sponge be doing holding
hands with a starfish or donning purple and hot-pink flowered garb to
redecorate
the Krusty Krab if he weren't a perverted invertebrate?

Before this is over, we're going to find out that SpongeBob is the illicit
spawn of the Tampa shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge. Who knew SpongeBob
would
become as fraught as the cover of "Abbey Road"?

It took Dr. James Dobson, the conservative Christian leader and gay marriage
opponent, who claims the president's re-election was more a mandate for his
ideas than George Bush's, to point out the insidious underside of the
popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. It takes a sponge to
brainwash a
child.

Holy Abe! Dr. Dobson outed SpongeBob at a black-tie inaugural fete last week
for members of Congress and political allies. He said that a "pro-homosexual
video" - starring SpongeBob, Barney, Jimmy Neutron, Winnie the Pooh, Kermit
the Frog and Miss Piggy - was set to go to elementary schools to promote a
"tolerance pledge," including tolerance for differences of "sexual
identity."

Hoppin' clams, as they say in Bikini Bottom, the den of epicene iniquity
where SpongeBob lives. Nothing good can come of tolerance.

Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, where SpongeBob beats the pants
off the competition, was flummoxed: "It's a sponge, for crying out loud. He
has no sexuality."

Dr. Dobson has done the country a service by reminding us to watch out for
the dark side of lovable but malleable sponges. He inspired me to fish
through
the president's Inaugural Address with a more skeptical eye.

Mr. Bush's epic pledge to support democratic movements and institutions in
every nation and to end "tyranny in our world" may seem wildly
pie-in-the-sky,
given that the Iraq vortex has drained our military.

Although his incendiary speech about "the untamed fire of freedom" has been
widely interpreted as a code-red warning to both foes and friends, I wonder
if the president knew he was literally promising to stamp out undemocratic
governments across the globe, which would include some of our top allies. He
probably thought it was a fancier way of repackaging the Iraq invasion, not
as a failed search for W.M.D., but as a blow for freedom (a word used 27
times)
and liberty (used 15 times).

I wonder if W. is surprised that people took it literally. The Bushes don't
always understand that they're being held to their rhetoric in major
speeches.
(Read my warships.) For such a brass-knuckled vision, the president's
delivery was curiously unemotional.

Some of the same advisers who filled Mr. Bush's brain with sugary visions of
a quick and painless Iraq makeover did mean the speech to be literal; they
are drawing up military options for the rest of the Middle East. Once again,
the lovable and malleable president seems to be soaking up the martial
mind-set
of those around him, almost like ... a sponge.

SpongeBush SquarePants!

We can only hope that Dr. Dobson doesn't pick up on the resemblance.
SpongeBob, as his song goes, "lives in a pineapple under the sea/absorbent
and yellow
and porous is he!" SpongeBush lives in a bubble in D.C./absorbent and
shallow and porous is he!

SpongeBush ensnared the country in a whale of a mess in Iraq because he
guilelessly absorbed the neocons' dire warnings about Saddam's weapons
capabilities
and their rosy assumptions about Ahmad Chalabi's leadership capabilities.

Dick Cheney is a gruff Mr. Krabs taskmaster to SpongeBush, but SpongeBush is
crazy about him anyhow. W. trustingly let his vice president make the
worst-case
scenario about Iraq a first-case scenario.

Mr. Bush might have thought he was just blowing pretty bubbles full of lofty
ideals about freedom and liberty in his speech, but Mr. Cheney and the
neocons
seem intent on filleting Iran and Syria. (Doesn't Richard Perle remind you
of the snarky and pretentious next-door neighbor to SpongeBob, Squidward
Tentacles?)

The vice president told Don Imus that Iran was "right at the top of the
list" of trouble spots, and that Israel "might well decide to act first"
with a
military strike.

Even if he's a little light in the flippers, SpongeBob has brought children
good, clean fun. SpongeBush has brought the world dark, endless fights.

Copyright 2005