Flat Daddies

Oh… my… God.

Via Crooks and Liars, a new way to cope with the losses imposed by war: Flat Daddies:

Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones.

But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they’re even closer.

Welcome to the “Flat Daddy” and “Flat Mommy” phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.

The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.

I’m sure this program is well-intentioned. Maybe it even helps families cope. But, oh, my God… what are we doing to these people?

Jesus’ General thinks this is just the thing for George W. Bush:

I’m wondering if Our Leader should consider doing something similar. A lot of people think he doesn’t care about the men and women who are defending us against Islamic enslavement. They wonder why he has time for vacations (a whole year’s worth of vacation time in the first five years of his presidency) but is unable to free himself for a few hours to attend a soldier’s funeral a stones’s throw across the Potomac at Arlington.

It doesn’t have to be that way. With a dozen or so Flat Deciders™, he could attend nearly every soldier’s funeral. I doubt most people would even notice that he’s only a cardboard cut-out. Indeed, the fact that the Flat Decider™ is merely a cold, heartless, two-dimensional rendition of a real human being is what makes it so realistic.