JONNYQUEST'S BLOG
Mad Rant: Clinton had the Devil in the Blue Dress, Bush gets the Woman in the Red Dress Pt. 1
Tuesday, May 8, 2007 1:48 PM
There were three stories that appeared on the same page of the newspaper this weekend that caught my attention. One was the Globally Updated Version of the Dr. Seuss classic the Zax, i.e. Manouchehr and Condoleezza—better-known as Mottaki and Rice (I thought mottaki was a kind of rice…)—sharing an ice cream at the Ministerial Conference in Egypt last week. Another was of the capsizing of a boatload of Haitians—many of whom were devoured by sharks before they had a chance to drown—trying to make it to the promised land. The third article had to do with a boy in Kansas who stabbed a duck and her two ducklings to death, a story making national news no doubt because we are now all on the lookout for Seung-Hui Cho-like early warning signs in all our children, whereas the “Get Off My Lawn!” 8-Mile Style has barely even made a local mark. Perhaps the thread linking these stories—besides the “other news from around the world, country, city” theme of the page—is that there is a bitter irony, an odd coincidence or one-liner fest attached to each.SHARM EL-SHEIKH, not CHARM, ALL CHIC
One State Two States, Red State, Blue States
Does anyone else here smell the irony?
Blue Boy Bill Clinton got screwed either by Monica Lewinsky or the forensic evidence left behind on her famous blue dress, depending on your point of view.
Red Man George Bush might be having problems of his own because of the red dress worn by Ukranian violinist Larissa Abramova at the State Dinner on the Red Sea.
Of course, Bush’s problem is much more indirect. As always it was his peeps that misbehaved and not him. So let’s set the stage. There was great anticipation by many in attendance. Could the Rose-Garden-by-Any-Other-Name begin a courtship with its avowed enemy? Could a spark ignite a Make-Love-Not-War fire in the star-crossed (or is it star-crescented?) protagonists’ hearts? Are there even hearts to spark?
( From The Garden Lodge by Willa Cather.)
Condi and Manou, The Lost Dinner Date.
“Sometimes, when the house was crowded from the orchestra to the last row of the gallery, when the air was charged with this ecstasy of fancy, he himself was the victim of the burning reflection of his power. They acted upon him in turn; he felt their fervent and despairing appeal to him; it stirred him as the spring drives the sap up into an old tree; he, too, burst into bloom. For the moment he, too, believed again, desired again, he knew not what, but something.
“From her childhood she had hated it, that humiliating and uncertain existence, with its glib tongue and empty pockets, its poetic ideals and sordid realities, its indolence and poverty tricked out in paper roses. Even as a little girl, when vague dreams beset her, when she wanted to lie late in bed and commune with visions, or to leap and sing because the sooty little trees along the street were putting out their first pale leaves in the sunshine, she would clench her hands and go to help her mother. Certainly she had served her apprenticeship to idealism and to all the embarrassing inconsistencies which it sometimes entails, and she decided to deny herself this diffuse, ineffectual answer to the sharp questions of life.”
Well, no, not quite. The way it played was like this. “The United States said for weeks Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was open to talks with Iran's foreign minister about Iraq but in the end her exchange amounted to pleasantries over ice cream. ‘You can ask him why he didn't make an effort. Look, I'm not given to chasing anyone,’ Rice said.
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