BUT HE IS A MORON!
Printed on Monday, November 25, 2002
By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)
(YellowTimes.org) � Fran�oise Ducros, director of communications for
Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien, said in a private conversation that
Mr. Bush was a moron for the way he pushed his obsession over Iraq at a
NATO meeting in Prague that had other, important issues to treat. Most
informed people on the planet would classify her observation in about the
same category as "sugary cereal makes a terrible breakfast," but it is so
rare to hear even the slightest truth expressed regarding America's
pathetic chief executive that a bit of a flap has arisen.
This happened only because her private remark was reported by a newspaper
founded by Canadian press baron, Conrad Black, a man who gave up his
citizenship in order to accept membership in Britain's House of Lords,
something which enables him to pontificate in neo-gothic halls while
costumed in a sweeping scarlet robe topped with puffs of white fluff. But
his good works in Canada continue behind him, and the absurdly-biased paper
he founded, The National Post, goes right on doing its duty - in this case,
the reporting of an unmistakably-private remark just to embarrass Canada's
Liberal Prime Minister.
I don't know what it is about the "neocon" crowd, perhaps it is their
affinity with the flaky religious right, perhaps it is stunted emotional
development, but they have this urge to crawl about sniffing into the
private affairs of others. They sniff around bathroom stalls, under beds,
or into the soiled contents of laundry hampers on their quest for suitable
political material - the absurd impeachment of President Clinton being the
century's greatest product of their strange urge.
A stain on a dress, a few weasel-words by a President, naturally enough,
anxious to avoid embarrassment, and voila, you spend a hundred million
dollars, tie up an entire nation for months, and publish as official
government documents, available for any young child to read, words and
descriptions best suited to the fiction genre known as bodice-rippers.
One of Canada's feeble, American-neocon wannabes, summoning every ounce of
authority his pinkish, plump, baby face is capable of displaying (ever
notice how many of these people resemble plump babies? Gingrich, Falwell,
Robertson, Limbaugh, etc. Likely there's a solid clue here to some unknown
syndrome or genetic abnormality.) demanded an apology and the dismissal of
Ms. Ducros. But Prime Minister Chretien is made of sterner stuff. He was
photographed in Parliament with his hand covering a yawn.
To my mind these events add considerable force to arguments for women's
greater involvement in politics. Women have demonstrated a superior ability
to recognize the embarrassing nakedness of a very eccentric emperor.
Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, daughter of a former prime
minister, last year made the private observation at a dinner in America
that Bush "is totally an asshole." This, again publicized by "neocons," of
course, involved precisely the word Bush himself had used himself during
his election campaign to describe, not a politician who threatened the
world's peace, but a newspaper reporter whose honesty he resented. Bush
refused to apologize for what was a private remark made before a live
microphone. Tanaka's remark, too, was private, but she was soon forced out
of the Japanese government.
German Justice Minister, Herta D�ubler-Gmelin, another tough, astute woman,
made the observation recently that Bush's approach to avoiding domestic
difficulties through war had previously been tried by Hitler. Students of
history will know that her statement was no more than dry fact, but to this
day Washington's Baby-Face-in-Chief refuses even to meet with the German
Chancellor, a pathetic display for a man holding such power. Any politician
with some effective intelligence would allow the matter to pass, calling
upon a quality variously called grace or largesse or class, but don't waste
your time looking for that quality in America's "neocon" crowd.
Bush's petulance over an inconsequential remark highlights why we now are
made to orbit dangerously around Iraq, a fairly inconsequential country,
already beaten-down by war and embargo. Saddam embarrassed Dad, and that's
reason enough to endanger, quite literally, the future of world peace. We
are to have Clinton's impeachment re-staged on an epic scale and set to
Wagnerian music drenched with blood and mysticism.
The obsession is particularly distressing acted out against a background of
revelations that North Korea, a bizarre regime if ever there was one,
likely has a couple of atomic bombs and certainly has a very active program
for manufacturing fissile material. North Korea also has missiles that can
reach several major population centers in Asia.
The obsession is acted out, too, against a background of explosive
instability in the Middle East. Mr. Bush simply ignores America's immense
obligations there. He refuses to see that his Teutonic-knights war on
terror, viewed by many as hopelessly infected with anti-Muslim prejudice,
only makes a deadly situation more deadly.
Meanwhile, America busies herself deploying immense resources to swat a fly.
Moron indeed.
John Chuckman encourages your comments: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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