So apparently Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have a frosty relationship, because Obama doesn't rub her back all the time or what-have-you. And that is why Obama went to Dresden, to "snub" Merkel, and to apologize for World War II.

Do you get how that is a snub? It is because Obama is hanging out in what used to be East Germany, where Merkel grew up, and not in Berlin, where she now lives. So fuck you, Merkel!

Right, so, Dresden. If you went to high school, you know all about Dresden, because that's when you really got into Vonnegut, when this one really cool teacher lent you his copy of Slaughterhouse-Five. The Allies—that's us—firebombed Dresden for not very good reasons, and tens of thousands of civilians died. And then, forty years later, because he hates America, Obama gave a speech there, to apologize for World War II.

Ahem. That is the spin adopted by some of the nuttier blogs out there. Some of the nuttier blogs and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal..

This is shameful, that the President of the United States should acknowledge any wrongdoing by America ever in its glorious history of unparalleled perfect goodness. Can you imagine the furor that would erupt if, say, he went to a German military cemetery where members of the SS were buried and called those monsters "victims of the Holocaust"? Someone might write a song about that sort of thing!

Then Barry and Angela and Elie Wiesel toured Buchenwald. And that's the news from Germany.

[Photo: AP]