Humor, especially black humor, sometimes captures political reality even better than the most incisive analysis. According to a joke popular in some circles in Lebanon, an ambulance on the way to the hospital signifies one of two things: another bombing of an anti-Syrian personality or another Shi'ite baby about to be born. The two possibilities represent, respectively, the focus of Lebanon's near-term government crisis, whose outcome is uncertain, and the essence of its longer-term identity crisis, whose outcome is virtually foreordained.
- Thursday, November 8, 2007