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America, they define this 'season' Not for a tropical itinerant to say these things. But all it could be said was that the White House Christmas tree was alight, there was merriment and almost a sense of arousal about a new Presidential election campaign, and the chestnuts were roasting in the fire and nobody seemed to even know that there were some tired Marines searching for a bearded dude called Sadaam Hussein in some part of oil-sodden Iraq. The Boston Sunday Globe carried war stories on Page 14, of mothers visiting Iraq in search of their children without US military clearance. This, behind stories of a Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert in a casino on page 1 along with the story of A moral drive for the Presidency by someone named Joseph Liberman. All the other stories were bout the "Northeasterner that buried Boston'', a 20 inch snow storm that seemed to take the feeling and cap it. This was America, where there are elections and Christmas and snowstorms, and Saddam Hussein is only for tomorrow's prime time entertainment. The guys who went to get him? Awkward, but what are they doing in a sandstorm? Everybody loves
a big rip roaring fight, and it is always the fight in your own
backyard that attracts the attention and not the one several thousands
of miles away. So, there were headlines that the flagging campaign
of one Joe Liberman was picking up, because former Vice President
Al Gore had endorsed the front-runner Howard Dean. He was ditched from the Newsweek cover the next day because Saddam Hussein was captured in Tikrit. But he doesn't have to be overtly miffed; TIME magazine ditched Jesus Christ from their cover. It is a blustery day in Washington D.C with a wind chill that's also ferocious that it all but knocks the wind off the sails of the most devoted follower of the Presidential stakes. We are told that Howard Dean is getting his campaign money via the Internet; he had invented ingenious ways of selling himself. But the whole of America is selling. A Sri Lankan friend in advertising living in Maryland says she misses the depth of advertising campaigns in Sri Lanka - and I could swear this is the first time anybody is complaining about missing depth and substance in salesmanship. In the Boston Sunday Globe, or any other paper in that part of the world, everything is on SALE mode. They tell me even petrol is cheaper on Sundays in Boston, so there is nothing really that's doesn't go on sale here. But, in America, where does the insulation really come from? Is it the snow? Is it the white Christmas, the Northeasterner that buries New England, that makes Americans pass the popcorn for a Presidential show, when there are youth dying in Iraq, and mothers looking for them in anguish -- all stories that are dead enough to be buried away on 15 the page? The chilling effect is it in the wind chill or is there a deep chill in the American psyche -- particularly in Washington, where there are several square feet of granite in testimony to thousands who died in Vietnam? Not even on this chilling day is the Vietnam memorial deserted. The endless list with names almost three abreast in a small font, that's testimony to how much lives were lost before America pulled out of Vietnam, and it chills you to the bone more than any blustery Northeasterly storm. But America is at Christmas. This is why in Colombo, on return, the hoardings that announce "for the first time, snow in Sri Lanka'' make me want to both laugh and cry. That Northeasterner, it doesn't look at all as good as it does on the front page photograph of the Boston Sunday Globe. It can get downright ugly I thought -- this snow business -- unless you are on the inside looking out. Therefore, this hailstorm of a commercial about snow in Colombo tells me we don't know what we are selling ourselves. I thought Jesus Christ was born a Jew, and that he lived closer to the sandstorms and Tikrit, which is that place that is close to the American consciousness -- only during prime time that is. If that was so, isn't Christmas supposed to be more a hot and steamy affair -- sandstorms more than snowstorms? But in Colombo it's too late to identify with anything that's even remotely close to Sadaam Hussein. Season time, we have always been identifying with a white Christmas, so they say. This is why there is an advertisement of Santa Claus this year by a lingerie manufacturer. She is in a bikini and skiing. We got to be confused about these things. Next time it might be Christ in the beach suit. But there is no confusion. The season is one big sale. And there are no sales bigger than the ones in America, where the snow falls faster than you can say Sadaam. Our leaders say it - America we must mimic! |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved. |
The
day before Sadaam Hussein was captured, those who went to get him
were not enjoying much concern on a winter's night in Washington.
Hold on. Was it winter - even?
