[ Note to readers: one of the problems with having a Wednesday deadline for a column that runs Monday morning is that occasionally, columns are overtaken by events. This is such a column. ]

I’ve seen a lot of things lately that made me realize how much things have changed since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. For one thing, I suddenly realized a couple of weeks ago that no one gave a rat’s wazoo anymore about Gary Condit’s so-called love life. (Don’t worry, this isn’t another one of those columns about how I’m finding pleasure in the simple things now. I’m still as shallow as I always was.)

The thing that really made me realize how much things had changed in my own life is when I woke up with a slight cough the other morning and said to myself, "gee, I hope this isn’t anthrax." Six months ago, all I knew about anthrax was that it was the name of a particularly loud and obnoxious rock band. Now, thanks to paranoia and the Internet, I can tell you the disease’s incubation period (usually one week but sometimes as long as two months) its varieties (cutaneous, which is absorbed through the skin, and inhalation, which is, well, inhaled) and its prognosis (for the inhaled kind, not too good.)

Recently, a Florida man was diagnosed with the inhaled kind. A few days later, he died. This was unusual enough, since no one has reported coming down with anthrax in the US for the last 25 years. Immediately, people started wondering if this was a terrorist attack, a concern that was in no way alleviated by the government’s immediate assertion that there was no way that this could be a terrorist attack. (The government’s case might have been more convincing if they hadn’t spent millions inoculating soldiers against the exact same disease because they were worried about it being used in biological warfare). The media alarm bells really started ringing when a co-worker of the first man was found to have anthrax spores in his nasal passages and another spore was found on a computer keyboard at the two men’s employer. That employer, by the way, was American Media, Inc., publishers of such noted and influential supermarket papers as the "Globe", the "Weekly World News" and that old standby, the "National Enquirer."

Paranoia set in almost immediately. People remembered that one of the nuts responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center had made inquiries in the same area of Florida regarding the use of crop-dusting aircraft. People immediately began reporting that strange containers of white powder were being found at various places in South Florida. Then a third person was found to have been exposed at the same site.

But let’s think about this for a moment. If this was a terror attack, it wasn’t a particularly successful one. While it may come as cold comfort to the family of the poor guy that passed away, a germ-warfare attack that only kills one person means that the system for containing such attacks actually works. Teams from the centers for Disease Control in Atlanta were apparently on the ground within hours of the diagnosis, the Palm Beach County Health Department has been testing hundreds, and doctors have described the possibility of finding a third case as "remote." The second person exposed to the spores is in the hospital, but it’s for an unrelated heart condition, and he’s being treated with antibiotics, which his doctors say were administered in time to keep him from catching a fatal case. The third exposed person is also being dosed with antibiotics. If this was indeed the next battle in the war between the terrorists and us, it looks like we stopped their offensive in its tracks.

As for reports of envelopes and vials of white powders being found: it’s South Florida, folks. People seem to have momentarily forgot that various types of white powders are not, shall we say, an uncommon thing there.

All of this, however, fails to answer the burning question: why would terrorists attack a publisher of sleazy tabloid newspapers? It’s possible that Osama bin Laden read the "Globe" story that claimed that the terrorist chief had "underdeveloped sex organs." Or maybe he saw the ads in the "Enquirer" promoting toilet paper printed with photos of his face.

The brave journalists of American Media, for their part, soldier on in their quest to bring us the real truth. The cover of the latest Weekly World News, for instance, has trotted out one of their old favorites: a half-human, half-bat creature dubbed Batboy. Batboy, whose discovery was reported a few years ago (complete with photographs!), now apparently has volunteered to join the U.S. Marines. ``U.S. government analyzing cave creature's unique ability in war against terrorists,'' the headline blares.

Semper Fi, Batboy. It’s good to know that the freaks and mutants of this world stand behind us. And it’s also good to know that even the threat of biological terrorism can’t keep the US tabloid press from delivering our weekly doses of weirdness. God bless ‘em, and God Bless America.

COPYRIGHT 2001 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.