Stateside With Rosalea: Adventure Travel

::Ty and Jo's Amazing Adventure!::

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it doesn't always get the right message across. Last week's little ditty for the Secretary of State would have applied equally to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had she also been National Security Advisor to Bill Clinton before being Secretary of State, and the pair of them had embarked on a "war on terrorism"--an oxymoron if ever there was one.

The image that went with the ditty is of a kid dressed to kill in a bulletproof vest and firing a gun in the direction of a pair of eyes in another part of town. The disturbing thing about the current wave of gang violence in the US is that it emulates the kind of "shoot up the entire neighbourhood" that memes like "sectarian violence" and "insurgency" bring to mind. Those concepts have to be kept at the front of the public consciousness in order to justify the war, and they're corroding society here in the States.

If the situation in Iraq weren't so damned tragic, it would be comical. It's like George W. Bush sees himself as Ty from the TV programme "Extreme Makeover"--tearing down the country and rebuilding it, while Condoleezza Rice sees herself as Jo on "Supernanny"--getting in there and teaching those unruly Iraqis how to behave in their own 'hood.

I suspect the only thing that would satisfy that pair would be a Sunni and Shia rendition of "I Got You, Abe" topping the charts in Baghdad as happy Iraqi families give thanks to Allah for Lincoln-style democracy. And like the pair of saps they are, George and Condi are being played for all they're worth by other folks with considerably less Pollyannic intentions.

::Ed and Helen's Amazing Adventure!::

Whaddya know! Last weekend, Sir Ed Hillary and Helen Clark's visit to Antarctica actually made the local TV news here, complete with video footage. The very next day, She-Who-Was-Named-After-Ed made her bid for President official on the Internet. No coincidence in the timing; Mrs Clinton had to squeeze it in between the end of the 100-Day Pelosi-Fest and the State of the Union Address.

::No T-shirts, please, we're Brown-nosers::

I trust you're all boycotting Qantas. Also on the local TV news was the story of the Aussie guy who was refused boarding privileges for a flight to the US from Oz because he was wearing a World's No. 1 Terrorist T-shirt complete with GWB's face on it. According to the news story, Qantas didn't want to risk offending their other passengers. Oh, diddums. So now it's no longer Ugly Americans who travel the world, but Free-Speech-Hating Americans?

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE--

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