Seven Daze

VH1’s weekly pop culture show, Best Week Ever, features a team of comedians who typically crack jokes on celebrity fodder like Britney Spears’ pregnancy or Kate Moss’ drug problems as they decide which celeb is having the all-time coolest week.

During the show panelists also decide who’s having a not-so-hot week. Like when Lindsay Lohan was in a car crash a few weeks ago, the goof troop concluded she was, like, having the opposite of a seven-day fun-a-thon.

But last week’s candidates for Worst Week Ever, though not nearly as sexy a topic as a Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston love triangle, are a bit more dramatic.

They’re the sad crew occupying the White House.

How is this for a week of bummers: Early last week the death toll for Americans in Iraq topped the 2,000 milestone, again raising questions about the administration’s vague timetable for the occupation or how much this war will cost our country in both dollars and lives. Additionally, a recent Pentagon report estimates that the number of Iraqi deaths since early last year totals more than 25,000.

President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, withdrew her nomination last Thursday after notable conservatives, who typically side with the president on a majority of his decisions, nearly spewed fire over the pick. Many on both the left and right correctly argued the nomination was ethically iffy because, if Miers would be appointed as a justice, she could rule on the same administration she served as White House legal counsel.

But wait, there’s more. Vice President Dick Cheney’s now former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted Friday on five counts related to his alleged obstruction of a federal investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA agent’s name (Valerie Plame) to the media.

The administration is facing criticism because, as some claim, the officials might have leaked the name to the press in order to get back at the agent’s husband, Joseph Wilson, who has been a critic of the Iraq war. Other names thrown around with the word ‘indictment’ not far behind are Cheney and Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove.

Then, on Sunday, a bipartisan group of legislators questioned ethics in the White House and called for administration officials to, in one way or another, “come clean with the American public,” as Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) put it.

He’s right. With Bush’s approval ratings widely reported to be at all-time lows (dipping below 40 percent), the best way for the administration to earn the faith of many Americans would be to simply come clean about the divisive issues surrounding the White House.

That might help administration officials avoid a string of embarrassments like last week’s that, as VH1 might put it, totally sucks for Bush and Co.