Demagogue

Even if you have been dead for 50 years and you only get to be an "honorary" one - from Newsday

Forced from her home in Germany by the Nazi threat and driven into hiding with her family in Amsterdam, Anne Frank wrote in 1942, "Hitler took away our nationality long ago."

Monday, a campaign began to give the Jewish teenager, whose moving diary and death in a concentration camp made her a symbol of the Holocaust, a new nationality -- as an honorary American.

"Who better to take Anne in than the United States?" asked Christopher Bodkin, the Islip councilman who is spearheading the initiative with Rep. Steve Israel.

Rep. Israel, you are an idiot.

But I loved this

Mary Geary, director of development at the Anne Frank Center USA, said Frank had an "affinity for Hollywood stars."

"I think she would have kind of been tickled to think that this would bring her closer to that echelon," Geary said.

More importantly, Geary said, Frank's experience should be a reminder to America that genocide still occurs, in Rwanda, Sudan and elsewhere.

"Is America doing enough now? I'd say not," Geary said. "She stands for the hope that humanity can do better."

Instead of bestowing meaningless honors on the long dead, why not try to do something to save the thousands dying in Darfur every day?

Or maybe, someday in the future, Congress can just make those 400,000 dead Darfurians "honorary" Americans as well.

Whatever is easier.