Thursday, January 30, 2003

What They're Really Scared of: Poetry What's the difference between the Bush White House and the former Communist regimes in Europe?  It is getting harder and harder to tell these days, as the administration seems increasingly fearful of dissent and free expression. The problem with the fundamentalist "my way or the highway line", is that as soon as one starts asking unscripted questions or not staying within the carefully proscribed boundaries that define the "axis of evil", things fall apart. So it is with a white house poetry symposium scheduled for Feb. 12th.  Rather than risk hearing anti-war poems and having poets attending speak their minds, the White House has cancelled the event.  Here is the story from today's Guardian. Is it true that Republicans never met a repression they didn't like, so long as it was practiced by them and not their enemies? It gets harder and harder for Bush to hold the moral high ground when virtually the entire religious establishment, most of the Nobel laureates in the world, and the vast majority of intellectuals and philosophers think he is acting like a madman. Nelson Mandela today captured this spirit when he said ""What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." Bush, who invited Mandela to the White House a little over a year ago, then called him  "a man whose name symbolizes freedom and courage".    Of course, others in the White House may not be so comfortable with Mandela.  In an interview with Newsweek last September, he also called Mr Cheney a "dinosaur" and an "arch-conservative" who does not want Mr Bush "to belong to the modern age." Mr Mandela recalled that Mr Cheney had been opposed to his release from prison. Hypocrisy, anyone?   12:26:48 PM   comment []

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