America's Laughable Election

The American presidential race is the greatest show on earth. The day to day, blow by blow, sound bite soliloquy is watched the world around. While the world can only watch, the privilege of participation falls solely to the American voter and our talented troupe of pretenders to the throne.

When I consider the "show" we've put on leading up to the Indiana primary, I really wish the world wouldn't watch. Though they can't deny the quality of American comedy.

Case in point: The recent triumvirate of presidential hopefuls campaigning at a "pro" wrestling SmackDown event. This is traditionally the battle ground of candidates for city council or county sheriff. Yet, there was Hillary on the big screen, perhaps a bit kittenish from her nationally televised shot of whiskey the week before. "Hi, I'm Hillary Clinton, but tonight, in honor of the WWE, you can call me Hill-Rod!"

I am not sure which was more laughable. That Hillary would ask for another name change or that she would use the word "honor" in the same breath as the WWE. If she had stooped to saying, "ya'll," I would have quit my job to actively campaign against her.

Obama, true to his elite credentials, put on no airs. He didn’t take it seriously, ending his brief pitch with a lighthearted laugh. He had the look of a man who knew the spot didn’t matter. He was right. Undereducated white males (a.k.a WWE fans) have consistently voted against him. Fortunately for him not many of them vote.

Then there was McCain hamming it up like Hillary. The torchbearer for conservative America trying to sound like a Mickey Spillane tough guy. He said, “To be the man, you have to beat the man.” I can die now having seen the day a Republican lifted political maxims off The Black Panthers.

To watch these and other transgressions against thousands of years of human intellectual development makes me itch for those halcyon days when candidates were blathering on about "soccer moms" or having us read their lips.

While it's nothing new for politicians to prostrate themselves before the public in an election year, this race has witnessed the electorate itself vying for new comedic lows. A survey published last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported that 10% of Americans still believe Barrack Obama is a Muslim. This is to be expected. Considering that 12% of respondents in another poll said they thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

The American press has kindly chipped in to keep the laughs rolling. While they rail against China and Russia for curtailing free speech, the media in America wastes the Jeffersonian gift outright. Moderating national debates questioning Obama's lack of patriotism for not wearing an American flag pin or editorializing whether McCain's use of expletives will affect his ability to lead.

Speaking of McCain, we now find that he, like Obama, has a Christian minister of questionable sanity. The press dug up a quote from Pastor John Hagee of Texas, a man who shared the stage with John McCain and endorsed him. He once told his congregation that God used Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled, “homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.”

Love us, hate us, or simply think we are a little off, the American voter should at least be granted a measure of sympathy. Our previous two elections were disastrous. The first found us trying to figure out who was elected and the second found us wondering why he was elected. Again.

Taking all of this into consideration, I think it is time to put our military technology to better use. We should enforce a global media blackout on all election news. Hack into broadcast satellites around the world. Show reruns of Seinfeld and The Simpsons until we sort this mess out. Give the world something to laugh at other than us.

Sadly, the show must go on.

That said, perhaps “comedy” is an inadequate term to describe our current display. It seems more and more a tragic play. Poorly scripted and poorly performed. If that is the case, then those who aren’t laughing are either holding their nose, or holding their breath over America's coming decision.

And to my fellow Americans I say, don't blame the world for doubting us. Lest you forget the guy we elected the two previous times, here is a snippet of our President Bush from a speech in Mississippi. "We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job. That's what I'm telling you."

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Protests and Patriotism Fan the Olympic Flame

**This is an original posting for an article published in the Korea Herald, April 24th.

As Chinese tempers continue to flare, along with the flags of western countries, we are witnessing patriotic fanaticism of the likes unseen seen since 2005 when the Japanese released watered down history textbooks. At that time the Chinese had good reason to gripe at their onetime colonial aggressor. This time the barrage of vitriol and violent protests is not quite so easily justified. If at all.

More interestingly, this latest display also highlights the fervor with which the Chinese masses will defend the actions of the very government that continues to keep a parent-like manacle firmly strapped to their intellectual ankles.

For those of you who have been on another planet, the escalating drama in recent weeks reads like this: Tibet stole China’s Olympic spotlight with an independence protest turned riot. The Chinese government, unlike western countries, generally skips straight through negotiation and tear gas, right into bashing heads with the masses while jailing or killing the primary ideologues. No doubt more than a few western leaders would enjoy such domestic leeway were it permitted.

In response to the criticism of their treatment of Tibet, the western world’s avowed love child, the Chinese first suggested that the ongoing dispute is akin to the American state of Texas seceding from the union. While on its face an absurd premise due to vastly different cultural and belief systems between the millennia-old rivals, the Chinese do have somewhat of a case. Albeit a bit shoddy.

Over the recent years the Chinese have raised the economic standards of what they consider to be the “primitive” Tibetans. China largely subsidizes the country’s otherwise meager GDP which averages around $1.8 billion a year. China additionally exempts Tibetans from all taxation as well as footing the bill for 90% of government expenditures. While tourism and modest farming in the largely non-arable region generates the bulk of Tibetan income, the Chinese are, to a great extent, holding the country of 2.6 million people together.

If only it were so simple. The divisions between the two adversaries run deep and they run long.

Since 670 AD various “Chinese” leaders have vied for control of the “rooftop of the world.” From the Tang Dynasty to the Mongols to Ming. From Ming back to the Mongols to the Manchu. And a scant few times back to the Tibetans. You get the picture.

Even the British and the Americans have staked a claim. The British were dabbling in Tibet for forty years starting in 1904. Once the British pulled back to India, the Tibetans went to war with China, winning back some of their land along with a truce. By 1950 the Chinese were back in control for good. At times jailing people in the hundreds of thousands to keep the peace while weathering a large scale transfer of arms from the CIA to the Tibetan rebels from 1950’s through the early 70’s.

Perhaps worse (I half joke, of course) recent years have seen public admonishment from actor, Richard Gere. Along with a burgeoning number of celebrity groupies of the Dalai Lama who, though the Chinese differ, claims to want a peaceful coexistence with the Chinese overlords who expelled him in 1959. And who of us in west didn’t take part in cause célèbre dissent on college campuses at some point in the past twenty years? Either out of sincerity to the movement or just to get a date to the rally?

For the People by the People?

The current problem lay in demographics and the distribution of wealth. According to the last census Tibetans make up 92.8% of the population while the Han Chinese make up a little over 6%. As in many Asian countries along China’s borders, the Chinese carry the bulk of the overall wealth. More worrisome to the Tibetans is the construction of a railway from China proper in 2006 that will ferry even more Han into Tibet. Adding additional fuel to a fire already ablaze with controversy is last year’s discovery of an estimated $128 billion in mineral deposits on the Tibetan plateau.There is no propriety on the notion that timing is everything. The Tibetan leaders know that. The world spotlight is on China’s booming economy, increased world presence and of course, lest you really have been on another planet, the huge stake of national pride in hosting the Olympic Games. Seemed the perfect time to take a shot at daddy.

The western response to the Chinese crackdown on Tibet was to disrupt the path of the torch, wave a few banners, get their message out and then head back home to see what was on the tube. Which, as is the norm, were the major networks trotting out sometimes obnoxious pundits who batter the topic, as well as the Chinese government around for a few days.That should have been the end of story. Let the western masses slink back to their beloved news of polygamist sects or who Simon is dissing on American Idol.

From there it would have simply gone onto, “Let the games begin,” and “wasn’t there something going on in that Tibet place?” as the ordeal faded from the western world’s short term memory. The Chinese government never could have imagined what came next. Though they should have.

Considering the patriotism China literally breeds into the people in their homes, schools and through the state controlled media, the masses predictably erupted at the west’s criticism of their beloved leaders. Anti-CNN websites were started, profanity laced Chinese-Tibetan history videos highlighting western colonialism hit You Tube, calls for boycotts of French grocery chains and, of course, massive demonstrations spilling into the streets. The story that would have quietly died grew wings and like a giant moth flew right smack into that spotlight.

So here we are

The great irony weaved within this continuing tale is that the western people protesting the Chinese government felt they were doing so in the name of the Chinese people themselves; long oppressed, mostly poor and shuttered from the world by the very government they now exuberantly defend.

Even more ironic is that much of this anger stemmed from the Chinese masses’ perception that the protests were somehow a western attempt to tarnish the Olympics. Now, at the hopeful tail-end of this mess begat by mess we find that it is the Chinese people’s belligerence towards mostly peaceful western protest that has given the issue longer life. Thus brightening the political glow of the Olympic torch, offering us a well lit look at the faces of those who will carry it into Beijing.


*Note: This was also published in the April 24th edition of The Korea Herald

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