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The US election campaign becomes more grotesque with each passing day. Like some great sticky-meringue celebration cake, it beckons one to probe through the fluffy topping and find substance beneath, only to discover there isn’t any.

That’s hardly surprising, for American culture is nothing more than sticky-meringue, with no solid base. Peer behind the thin veneer of razzmatazz and, like a Hollywood film set, all that’s discovered are a few bits of precarious scaffolding desperately attempting to support the structure.

The presidential election has degenerated into nothing more serious than a baseball grand-final. Two teams cheer on their favorites and jeer the opposition. Although the campaign has dragged on for the best part of twelve months, neither candidate hints at how he will run the country, if elected, preferring to cast aspersions at the opponent than display any leadership ability.

Iraq no longer features as an issue. Skillful manipulation by a controlled media has sidelined a war now considered done and dusted. The troops will be home in 2011. George Bush says they will. It must be true, even though he’s never before uttered one sincere word in the past eight years.

Vice President Dick Cheney is off this week to visit NATO’s fledgling, Georgia, on an errand of mercy to support its rapidly flagging Saakashvili. Apparently, so is the wife of John McCain. One Australian newspaper called her a ‘philanthropist’ with a mission to assess the human suffering caused by Russia’s military incursion.^[1] Philanthropy must be difficult with only a hundred million in the bank, but then, one can purchase a lot of sticky-meringue with all that money.

Peer behind the thin veneer of these visits and the scaffolding is revealed as yet another opportunity to flutter the Stars & Stripes at the folks back home. One can be certain the media cameras will be in attendance. What could be more appealing to warmongering political waverers from either party, than the sight and sound of Cheney denouncing the Russians to the Georgian parliament, while sweet, demure, Cindy tours the Caucasian peasantry handing out dollar bills and US flag pins.

Apparently, there are no plans for either Cheney or Cindy to visit South Osettia, to view the suffering inflicted on its population by Saakashvili’s invasion; you’ll remember, of course, his aggression that resulted in hundreds of dead Russian citizens, and provoked Putin’s military response?

No, if you’re an average American, you probably won’t.

Meanwhile, back in the homeland, Republican campaign workers are out netting female ex-Hillary Clinton supporters. Embittered by Clinton’s failure to secure the nomination, and ready to stand before a camera – forty pieces of silver already jingling in their purses – they denounce Barack Obama and kneel to lick the boots of John McCain. It’s a neat slice of sticky-meringuery designed to draw even more of their ilk to the Republican fold. As yet, no-one has bothered to point out the insult to Hillary Clinton perpetrated by such action. To suggest her policies would parallel those of the neo-con advisors relied on by John McCain – who, to be honest, has clearly demonstrated he doesn’t know his Shiite ass from his Sunni elbow – rather than those of her Democratic rival Barack Obama, merely serves to underline their contempt for future US policy; proof, if needed, that the sole purpose of these Democratic Jezebels was to secure a white female in the White House.

Nevertheless, many ex-Hillary Clinton supporters are fully justified to claim that Barack Obama is ‘not yet ready’ to be president. After all, he still hasn’t changed color.

Not to be outdone for sticky-meringuery, the Democratic convention began this week with a huge splodge of razzmatazz and self-adulation. Then, proving the Republicans have an upper hand, the Democrats launched into full defensive mode with much talk of revealing just who was Barack Obama – as if we didn’t already know. Probably more has been written about this presidential candidate than any other in the history of the United States, yet the main speech of the opening day came not from him, or his vice presidential nominee, but from his wife.

It leaves one wondering who will be running the country for the next four years: Cindy McCain or Michelle Obama?

As the weeks tick away and November 4th looms ever closer, the race card in this presidential campaign becomes more glaringly obvious. Any idea that racial issues have been maturely dealt with by America may prove one of the victims of this election. Others include world peace, attempts to reverse global warming, and formulation of a real US foreign policy, rather than a domestic policy that reaches way beyond America’s boundaries and tries to encompass the world.

These are real political issues and therefore have no place in a US election campaign. After all, Americans are about to determine their new Pop Idol.

The rest of the world will have to wait. This sticky-meringue celebration cake is solely for US consumption.

^{[1] “McCain’s wife to visit Georgia” The Australian, August 26th 2008}

Filed under: Where’s the fruit and nuts?

There are occasions when one nation’s foreign policy can look more like a toddler’s tantrum over toy privileges, rather than a mature response to the actions of another country. Using US naval destroyers to deliver aid to Georgia is a perfect example.

The USS McFaul is the first of three naval vessels to arrive off the port of Batumi, on the Georgian coast, supposedly carrying blankets, hygiene kits and baby food.

While aid agencies are working in the area, the need for aid shipments isn’t quite clear. During the conflict, around 30,000 South Ossetian refugees fled to North Ossetia, part of Russia and presumably beyond the domain of western agencies, and it’s estimated 128,000 were displaced within Georgia. This is not, however, sub-Saharan Africa. Georgia is a European nation. A minor skirmish with its larger neighbor, that lasted two weeks, can hardly have depleted stocks of merchandise sufficient to require an operation more suited to Ethiopia or Sudan.

It begs the question whether three US warships laden with babymilk are really answering a desperate plea for assistance from the Georgian people, or if their response has more to do with the need of the US government to wave its flag off the Georgian coast, in the hope Russia’s military will notice and flee in fear and trembling, back to their homeland.

Neither is the case. The purpose of the USS McFaul, and its sister ships, is to wave the flag towards the folks back home in America. It says to Americans, “Look at us. We’re here to stand up to those nasty Russians and sort the problems they caused by invading poor, defenseless, little Georgia.”

Unfortunately, the US warships presently lying off Batumi can’t get into that port to unload, because the water’s too shallow. There’s a much bigger port up the coast at Poti, with good depth of water, but the US warships dare not go there.

It’s still occupied by the Russians.

Filed under: Georgia on my mind

Now that the Beijing Olympics are running their final course – the Olympic Village a sea of hastily stuffed suitcases and used sneakers; athletes packing to catch their flights home, and the famous Bird’s Nest stadium about to be demoted to just another execution site for Chinese political prisoners – I have a few words to say to the American sports commentators, flown at great expense from the United States to double our delight and pluralize our pleasure, during this momentous, quadrennial event:

“FOR GOD’S SAKE, SHUT UP!”

I’m no great sports fan. I don’t savor the weekend ballgame or rush off to the golf course at every opportunity. I don’t even know what ESPN stands for. Just once in a while, however, my interest in matters physical raises itself above the level of a female body beautiful and attaches me to the cathode ray tube for a week, or a fortnight, of sport spectacular.

The British Lawn Tennis Championships at Wimbledon; the soccer World Cup; the Olympics. Throughout my life these events have held a certain fascination. Then, sadly, I moved to the United States of America.

Yes, I can still view these events, albeit through a constant barrage of Pepsi Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Viagra marketing, but the enjoyment is sucked away as surely as a Texas teen demolishing a Coke in the heat of a Dallas summer, by the inane chattering of certain employees of the US corporate media who misrepresent themselves as, “commentators”.

In truth, their aim is to distract the viewer from the current event by disclosing lurid details of their past life, latest acquisitions from Christian Dior, or in the case of one female broadcaster at the Olympics, a lecture on the architecture of the stadium roof during a particularly engrossing performance of a Russian rhythmic gymnast who needed no commentary, other than the most delicate of vocal punctuation, to transport one to a blissful state of nirvana by her beauty, poise, and ballet-like dexterity.

The woman responsible for this rape of art and physical flawlessness is no exception to the rule. Rather, she is the norm. Wimbledon is ruined annually by the vocal floodgates of ex-US tennis stars-cum-media reporters who have about as much idea how to conduct a commentary on play as the Roman Emperor Nero had of Christian forgiveness.

Last year’s World Cup soccer tournament suffered similar inanity.

There’s a good reason for such lack of professionalism brazenly displayed by those employed by US corporate media outlets like NBC, (who, incidentally, have somehow secured the contract to exclusively cover both the Vancouver winter Olympics of 2010, and the London Olympics of 2012). It’s an automatic assumption that ex-players make good commentators. Nothing is further from the truth. While a sports commentator benefits from a thorough grounding in his particular field, the art of commentary has nothing to do with physical expertise in any particular sport.

Those of us mature enough to remember great BBC radio commentators like John Motson, Kenneth Wolstenholme, and Eddie Waring know that sports stars don’t necessarily make good commentators – something the US media has yet to fathom.

This supplanting of vocal expertise by pointless prattle is a necessary part of televised American sport. With the possible exception of basketball, other activities – baseball and American football – involve short periods of involvement interspersed with long, grotesquely boring, eons of inactivity that necessitate some form of vocal interlocution to prevent the viewer lapsing into somnolence. For this, the American ‘commentator’ is indispensable.

Fortunately, in the rest of the world sport partakes of sufficient activity to render such vacuous verbiage unnecessary to the point of distraction. Not to make too fine a point, it’s bloody annoying.

If US commentators have nothing better to say during a sporting event than to comment on such matters as the stadium roof, we’d all be much better off if they stayed at home and left the grace and skill of the competitors to speak for itself.

Filed under: Undesirable vocal proliferation