The World O' Crap Archive

Welcome to the Collected World O' Crap, a comprehensive library of posts from the original Salon Blog, and our successor site, world-o-crap.com (2006 to 2010).

Current posts can be found here.

Monday, January 31, 2011

If You Don't Know What's Wrong, I'm Not Going to Tell You

I was enjoying breakfast on the lanai shortly after dawn this morning, and in between sips of macadamia nut-flavored coffee and the repetitious thud of golfballs from the nearby links bouncing off the roof, I read Maureen Dowd’s column in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.  (I know, I know, but it was either that, or Garfield.)  And while I’m not particularly a fan of MoDo–her bon mots are more often mal mots–I did enjoy this:
The more W. and his tough, by-any-means-necessary superbabe have tried to tame the Middle East, the more enflamed the Middle East has become.  Now the secretary of state is, reluctantly and belatedly, doing some shuttle diplomacy that entails little diplomacy and no shuttling.  It’s more like air-guitar diplomacy.
But this is the part that really struck me:
Condi doesn’t want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran — “Syria knows what it needs to do,” she says with asperity
This is a tactic well-known amongst high school girls and I freely admit that at a certain time in my life (9th through 11th grades inclusive) I was highly susceptible to it.  But while I don’t dispute its efficacy as a behavior modification tool, its use by the United States Government raises some potentially disturbing issues.  Chief among them:  How long has our Secretary of State been going steady with Syria?  And is this just like a summer fling, or has Syria pinned her, and she’s told all her friends on the pep squad?

 I don’t have the answers, but I would suggest that when the various delegates meet to negotiate the terms of a heightened U.N. peacekeeping presence in southern Lebanon, if Secretary Rice appears wearing Syria’s letterman jacket, it could signal an historic shift in U.S. foreign policy.  On the other hand, if President Assad begins each press conference sitting glumly beneath the statue of Rodin’s The Thinker like the opening of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, then he’s probably never going to nail Condeeza Rice (Tuesday Weld), and is going to have to make do with Zelda Gilroy (John Bolton).

9 Responses to “If You Don’t Know What’s Wrong, I’m Not Going to Tell You”

Hilarious and wrong. Have I mentioned how delighted I am that you’re co-blogging here? You two are fab.
and here I was thinking “that sounds like a line from ‘Heathers’”
So who’s Maynard?
Captalize Secretary of State, Dowd!
Well, thank god she’s at least moved beyond the patticake with W stage (I hope).
FYI, the real Zelda Gilroy (Sheila Kuehl) is currently a California State Senator and gay/lesbian activist. Go know!
Comfort Goodpasture writes: So who’s Maynard?
You rang?
Ahhhhhh, gone are the days. Back home in Sundowntown Beach, Bob Denver appeared at the town fair at the peak of his fame as Gilligan, not as Maynard G. Krebs. Everyone else was so excited!
Condi Rice about Syria sounds more like PAris Hilton about Nicole Richie.

No comments:

Post a Comment