Do you remember high school, when the popular and all-powerful jocks would make the lowly geeks do their dirty work? Naturally, the geeks obliged, because it was the only way they could get any face value in the high school social scene. Biology homework? Done. English paper? In your locker by tomorrow. Lunch money? Here, I wasn't hungry anyway.

It's amazing how these high school heirarchies transcend into society. Case in point: the Newsweek scandal. We've all heard it by now: Newsweek reporting desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay during interrogations of Islamic prisoners, then retracting it soon after, claiming their information could not be backed.

That's right, Newsweek provided a retraction. The thing many people seem to overlook, however, is that a retraction is not necessarily Newsweek saying, "We lied and we're full of shit." To retract something is to take back what you said. That doesn't mean you don't believe it.

During a particularly heated argument when I was 16, I told my mother she was a manic-depressive nutjob. After about two hours of her loudly sobbing in her bedroom, and at my father's prodding, I begrudgingly told her I took it back.

Didn't mean I didn't think she was a manic-depressive nutjob. Most days, I still think it. I took back what I said because it was the nice thing to do, because it's what my father wanted to do, and it was what would best calm my mother.

Newsweek has never denied that events they detailed in their article. And interestingly enough, neither has the American government.

That being said, back to that high school heirarchy. Remember when the jocks would get busted for utilizing slave geek labor? They denied all wrongdoing (if they were smart, which I know is in itself an oxymoron). It was the geek's fault. The geeks were all wrong. Those bad, evil geeks — "Don't look at us, it was all them. They are the ones you should be busting!"

The American government is brushing the dirt off its hypothetical letterman jacket and letting the American media — who are ultimately the geeks grown up and with college degrees — take the fall.

Maybe Newsweek had a bit of truth in its story. I don't know; I've lived in a college dorm for two years now, and I've seen the flushing capacity of a economy toilet. It's barely enough for the waste products of St. Patrick's Day festivities (which I can personally attest to, but no matter). Maybe, just maybe, they were right.

But it's not Newsweek that takes the fall for that story if it's true. No, it's the American government. It's not Newsweek reporters flushing the Koran. It's American soldiers.

So America gets hit with the backlash. And instead of investigating the allegations, instead of a Senate hearing, the American government does what comes easiest to this country: blame the journalists.

Maybe I'm cynical because I'm a journalist myself. Or maybe I'm just the optimist in that I hope that Newsweek did indeed know what it was doing.

In high school, the teachers took a shining to the geeks, because most teachers were geeks themselves at some point. My only hope is that the geeks come out on top on this one, because the all-powerful jocks must inevitably fall for their indiscretions.