Sunday, August 20, 2006

THE REAL MONKEY



No sooner had I written the previous post than I went on-line to listen to the interview Mike Wallace did of President Ahmadinejad of Iran, which apparently has created a stir among journalists, some feel Wallace should not have "stooped" to such an encounter, others correctly as having lost it.

That Mike Wallace, who is apparently 87 years old, should think he can get the better of a man in his prime is already hubris.  But what is troubling, is that the American ikon is shown here to be an empty shell: apparently, he is so used to towing the company line, that he is incapable of consequential thought.  He comes off as feebly trying to bully someone who is in every way his superior.  A real monkey, despair at not being able to break out of his cage clearly showing in his face and gestures.  A general signing an act of rendition wouldn't feel worse.

As for Ahmadinejad, the only thing that troubled me was his claim that research into the Holocaust is denied.  So much research has been conducted that this cannot be taken seriously.  But his point that the Palestinians should not be made to pay for a German crime is unexceptionable, and that has always been by opinion.

But there is more: the Iranian leader speaks the same language as Fidel Castro, as Hugo Chavez, as Lopez Obrador, as well as Nasrallah in Lebanon and the leader of Hamas whose name I have forgotten (they are here today and assassinated tomorrow).  The discourse of these men shows clearly that there are two opposing camps in the political arena: not democracy and tyranny, not modernity and backwardness, and not even the West and the Rest.  The camps are the haves and the have-nots, as always.  America and Israel are the two top dogs in the struggle being waged by people of all colors and religions for respect and pie.  And it is the underdogs, not the creators of the United Nations, who are seeking dialogue.

The ignorance of Mike Wallace and the lack of courtesy on the part of President Bush toward another world leader who writes to him, are two faces of the same coin: a Janus-faced monkey.

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