Hi George ...here's an interesting little "ditty" for you written by Gordon Sinclair..
a Canadian newspaper columnist (deceased) and sometime curmudgeonly tv panelist on
Front Page Challenge(Canadian TV Show)...in a lot of ways similar to your Andy Rooney...
I think he made a recording of this which I heard on the radio years ago.
Have a good one..eh.
gg.. your northerly neighbour.
"Americans" by Gordon Sinclair (circa 1973)"
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French, and
British exchanges this morning hitting the lowest point ever known in West
Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it's
time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possible the least
appreciated people in all the earth.
As long as 60 years ago when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods
on the Yellow River and Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help?
The Americans did. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon,
the Ganges, and the Niger. Today the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is under
water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the
debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave
other billions in debts. none of those countries is today paying even the interest
on its remaining debts to the United States.
When the Franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who
propped it up and the reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of
Paris.....I was there.....I saw it.
When distant cities are hit by earthquake, it's the United States that hurries in to
help. Managua, Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring,
fifty-nine American communities have been flattened by tornadoes.......nobody
has helped. The Marshall Plan, the Truman Policy, all pumped billions upon
billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries
are writing about the decadent, war-mongering Americans. I'd like to see just one
of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build
its own airplanes. Come on let's hear it! Does any other country in the world
have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed TriStar, or the Douglass
10? If so, why don't they fly them. Why do all international lines except Russian
fly American planes. Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a
man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get
radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk
about American technocracy and you will find men on the moon...not once, but
several times, and safely home again. you talk about scandals and the Americans
put their's's right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even the
draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets most of
them, unless they break Canadian laws, and getting American dollars from Ma and
Pa at home to spend here.
When the Americans get out of this bind (as they will) who could blame them
if they said "the hell with the rest of the world....let someone else build or repair
foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes."
When the railways of France, Germany, and India were breaking down through
age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and
the New York Central went broke nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are
still broke. I can name you five thousand times when the Americans raced to the
help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone
else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even
during the San Fransisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone and I'm
one Canadian who's damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will
some out of this thing with their flag high and when they do, they are entitled to
thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present trouble. I hope
Canada is not one of them, but there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians and
finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48 annual meeting in New Orleans,
that it was broke.
This years disasters have taken it all and nobody, but nobody has helped."
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