Author: R J Adams

I’m not a great fan of beauty contests – or, pageants, as they are known in the US. The argument that they are degrading to women I find somewhat tenuous, given the contestants are there of their own free will, and the defenders of that assertion tend to be, well, not the sort of female one would vote for in a beauty contest pageant.

No, my objection to beauty pageants is “big business”. Like everything else in the world today, from religion to baseball, the prime aim is to make someone rich. In this case, not the contestants, so much as the organizers. Hence it comes as no surprise to find the names Donald Trump and NBC associated with the most recent beauty pageant – Miss Universe – to blossom once more onto our TV screens.

I missed it. I’m glad I did. The contestants all look alike, anyway. Once upon a time, you could at least differentiate the Oriental competitors from the rest by their slant eyes. This year’s winner, Miss Japan, didn’t appear to have slant eyes and could as easily have hailed from Sacramento as Shizuoka.

I’m also happy I missed Miss USA, Rachel Smith, falling on her bottom while attempting to display a, no doubt, hideously expensive evening gown. Most of all, I was pleased to miss the boos and hisses she engendered from the bad-mannered Mexican audience.

Of course, it wasn’t Rachel Smith they were jeering. It was the nation she represented. A nation most of the world wants to boo at this moment.

George Bush’s dark world of politics and malevolent power has invaded even the Miss Universe pageant.

Filed under: End of innocence

One has to wonder if the latest antics of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, stomping jack-booted over the rights of the independent media in that country, are not secretly admired and envied by certain individuals close to, if not a part of, the U.S. government.

Frankly, it’s a little tiring to hear the near-constant stream of whining from high-ranking Americans, with a big yellow-streak replacing their backbones, complaining their failures have been due entirely to the exploits of “the media”.

If it’s not George W Bush trying to convince us his lack of popularity is entirely due to negative reporting of the Iraq war, cue Alberto Gonzales blaming the media, and just about everyone else in Washington, for the recent and long-overdue downturn in his fortunes.

Perhaps Gonzales’ inability to remember anything more important than his own name, when faced with an irate Congress, might be reason enough for internment in one of those secret CIA prisons, where surely a jolly water-boarding session would rapidly have improved his cognitive faculties.

After all, we have it on good authority – it’s not torture. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a tough al Qaeda prisoner, lasted a full two and a half minutes before he got his memory back. Alberto Gonzales would undoubtedly be cured before his toes touched the water.

The latest member of this “I’m-a-poor-victim-of-the-media” band of whiners is about to leave his exalted position at the World Bank.

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz told the BBC recently:

“”People were reacting to a whole string of inaccurate statements and by the time we got to anything approximating accuracy the passions were around the bend……….I think it tells us more about the media than about the bank and I’ll leave it at that.”

So this whiter-than-white, blameless, individual was ousted by an overly-passionate media, even though, apparently, we have now reached a point “approximating accuracy”.

Just exactly what is “approximating accuracy”? Well, it’s something like this:

Wolfowitz was dating Shaha Riza before George Bush handed him the top job at the World Bank. She was already working there. He accepted the position knowing there would be a conflict, given the bank’s ruling against personal relationships between employees and supervisors, even when the chain of command was indirect. When others at the bank began making unhappy noises about the liaison, and the Ethics Committee decided Shaha Riza had to be moved, Wolfowitz dictated the terms of her settlement to the Bank’s Vice President for Human Relations, Xavier Coll. No doubt his fellow PNAC member, Dick Cheney, was instrumental in securing her new position at the State Department, coincidentally in the office of his daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, who just happened to have her own plum job in the Office of Near Eastern Affairs.

That Wolfowitz demanded a nice fat, tax-free, salary for his lover, of $180,000 per annum with yearly 8% increases, could surely only be construed as the act of a kind and benevolent gentleman?

Were it not for the “overly-passionate” rantings of the Washington Post and other news media, coupled with disgruntled World Bank employees making a fuss, Wolfowitz may well have got away with it. As it was, an internal investigation was initiated and it was discovered Wolfowitz had failed to disclose, either to the Bank’s board or its Ethics Committee, the terms of Shaha Riza’s final settlement, as he had dictated it. Even the bank’s top lawyer was not privy to the information.

Of course, as is the case in the upper echelons of business society, poor Wolfowitz had to be given a “respectable” way to resign. This was eventually agreed by the bank’s board very publicly accepting he had “acted ethically and in good faith.” Which begged the question: if that were so, why was he resigning?

So now the nasty media has been responsible for the demise of at least three members of that war-mongering, power-hungry, bunch of neo-con crazies responsible for the doctrine known as the Project for the New American Century. Wolfowitz is in disgrace; Rumsfeld proved himself incompetent, and I. Lewis Libby faces a possible, and hopefully long, prison sentence for his part in the outing of Valerie Plame. He was not alone in that. There are others with signatures on that PNAC document breathing a little rapidly as the public prosecutor delves ever deeper.

And it’s all the fault of those “overly-passionate” out-to-get-them, media journalists with nothing better to do than spread false rumor and malicious gossip, that strangely almost always turns out to be true.

Yes, there are probably a few in Washington who, watching the antics of Hugo Chavez way down there in Venezuela, sense a moment of empathy and kinship with the man well on his way to becoming the next South American dictator.

Filed under: Spineless wonders

Normally, I do my shopping on a Thursday, at Wal-Mart. While I consider Wal-Mart the epitome of capitalist monopolies, it really is the only place in our town available to purchase all one’s weekly needs under one roof, which rather proves my point.

This week was an exception to the norm. Rather than shop Thursday, I decided to go early Sunday morning, while it was quiet. The Wal-Mart experience is horrifying enough without the addition of milling hordes, screaming kids, and constant trolley collisions.

Consequently, 9.00am this Sunday morning saw me trolling around Wal-Mart, filling my trolley with all possible speed and ready to make a hasty dash for the exit.

Now, I’m not a great consumer of alcohol. As a part-time school bus driver, abstinence through the week is essential, so it’s usually only Friday and Saturday evenings that a small tipple becomes the order of the day. But this week saw the last of school for the summer, and my long stored bottle of Scotch whiskey had landed in the trash can only the previous night, and needed replacing without delay.

Consequently, by the time I arrived at the Wal-Mart check-out, at precisely 9.10am this Sunday morning, sitting atop the food and other items in my trolley was one bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label and two bottles of white table wine.

I had already loaded the conveyor, the part-time Sunday check-out girl busy filling bags on the carousel, when I heard a loud cry behind me:

“You can’t purchase those before 10 o’clock!”

Bewildered, I turned about to see a rather fat, middle-aged, woman in pince-nez spectacles standing behind me, the word “Supervisor” emblazoned across the plastic badge pinned malevolently to her bosom.

“Alcohol!” She barked.

From her lips the word flashed like some medieval witch’s curse, as with a decisive sweep of her arm she reached over the belt and rapped long, plastic, fingernails cursorily across the bottles.

Aware now that she must be invoking some ancient, religious, Illinois taboo, I determined not to give an inch until having to.

I smiled sweetly, “Is there a problem?”

For a moment she appeared perplexed, assuming perhaps I had not understood the first time.

She repeated herself, “Not before 10 o’clock! You may not purchase alcohol before 10 o’clock.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

It seemed an innocuous question to me, but Ms Supervisor was obviously not used to being interrogated by the irreligious on the Sabbath.

She drew herself up to full height, “It’s the LAW!”“

Unlike those obnoxious individuals who take delight in berating innocent shop staff for rules over which they have no control, I am always careful never to utilize them as a focus for my frustrations in such circumstances, but my present adversary’s attitude was irksome in the extreme.

I returned to my sweet smile. “Why?” I repeated.

Momentarily, I observed a tinge of pink on the face, a brief uncertainty in the eyes, before the only answer she had available popped into her brain.

“It’s the Sabbath!” she exclaimed with a trace of triumphalism, as though this were a totally plausible explanation.

I glanced at my watch. “But, according to you, only for another fifty minutes?”

The trace of triumphalism vanished, to be again replaced by pink face and bewilderment. Reaching out, she vigorously swept the three bottles from the conveyor, and snapped……

“We don’t make the law. We just have to enforce it!”

……..before rushing away in the vague direction of the Wines and Spirits rack.

I caught the eye of the check-out girl, brows quickly raised, then lowered as though afraid someone in authority might see, and reprimand. I grinned at her. She grinned back, briefly, before lowering her eyes and returning to her check-out duties. I got the picture. She didn’t much like the overzealous supervisor, either.

Driving back home, car trunk loaded down with the week’s groceries – less three bottles of booze – I got to pondering on the strange illogicality of this law that set its Sabbath time limits. In my own native Wales, for many years the cold and religious held sway over the laws of the land, banning alcohol on the Sabbath in large areas of that country. Then, slowly the Welsh began to realize most of their income came from English tourists, flocking to the picturesque hills and mountains and seashores on their leisure weekends, and demanding alcohol to enhance their recreation. Gradually commerce overcame piety, until now the whole of Wales is open for alcoholic business on the Sabbath, just as any other day.

Probably, such is the case with Illinois. I’m sure there was a time when the sale of alcohol, along with plenty of other commodities, was totally banned on a Sunday. Wal-Mart lost sales as a result, and eventually the pious found their influence dwindling before the pressure of capitalist commerce. As a sop to the churches, it was no doubt agreed to keep the hours from midnight Saturday till 10.00am Sunday as sacrosanct to God, given that it didn’t really interfere with alcohol sales as the only mugs daft enough to be up and about at that time, and not in church, were irreligious wretches like RJ Adams.

To my mind, it’s a great presumption to limit one’s Almighty to a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, though it’s certainly in line with the way most Christians seem to treat their “God”.

It’s all highly illogical, but then, for many of us so is religion.

Filed under: Have a drink on me