What did our President think was the very best, the very, very best, bestest, most fabu', coolest gee-whiz aspect of American Culture to show off to President John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana at his state dinner at the White House last night?
"The Lion King"
I shit you not.
Can you imagine? Here's President Kufuor; MA Oxford, member of the Bar (Lincoln Inn), MP, Head of State, lingering over his Banana Coconut Pudding in its' Graham Cracker Crumble and Cocoa Pod Shell when from out of the East Lawn comes capering a bunch of bastardized pseudo-African pop culture icons who proceed to sing and dance to tunefully juvenile faux-African Elton John ditties.
Now picture the situation reversed: our President saluted by an Ghanaian version of "The Man Show" live, complete with big-breasted Ghanian gals in "Juggy" whiteface, singing bison and mountain lions.Dick Cheney gets to be "Scar", of course.
Does this mean that the next time Chancellor Merkel of Germany visits she gets serenaded with "Der Fuhrer's Face?" Or do we put on "The Mikado" for the Prime Minister of Japan, "Mucha Lucha" for President Fox?
Jesus fucking wept.
Is there no end to this humiliation, in even the smallest of things..?
January, 2009 can't come too soon.
7 comments:
Could have been worse, Bush could have shown him the Disney version of the Jungle Book.
I was on an academic hiring committee back in the day, and we were trying to decide where to take a candidate out to dinner...we (the college) was trying rather desperately to hire non-white faculty, and the candidate was a Latino. One of my colleagues, who considered herself both culturally sophisticated and extremely liberal, insisted that a Mexican restaurant was the only way to go.
I cringed in my seat.
But, you know, apparently brown skin means tacos and salsa.
God, horrible, simply horrible. You would cringe if the Python troupe tried this.
The President needs some "couth training," as Jim says (and needs.)
"You would cringe if the Python troupe tried this."
Basil: "Whatever you do...DON'T MENTION THE WAR!!!"
I have no words. Wait - Moron comes to mind.
Basil: "Whatever you do...DON'T MENTION THE WAR!!!"
Geez, anymore you're such a wet blanket!
:-)
Actually, I hadn't thought of it until YOU mentioned it.
But I do wish Chapman and the boys were young again. They'd have more than enough material to run a show every single night of the week for years.
That's it. Life in America has been transformed into a Monty Python skit.
I understand it all now.
...
yes, basilbeast--life as Python skits.
From the cynic Jim I have learned one worldview, namely, life begins with Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, devolves into a Pythonesque miasma, and ends with the wretched lonliness of Seeger's Night Moves. Not my vision, but it seems to fit large swathes of our population.
Mostly, life is Python.
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