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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (60254)	3/7/2006 4:07:25 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 360969

Someone Slap Tony Blair By Jane Smiley* huffingtonpost.com 03.07.2006 I would like to take a moment to forget about the Oscars and give Tony Blair a well-deserved whipping. American readers may not have noticed, but Blair is said by the Guardian to be "reconciled to the prospect that God and history will eventually judge his decision to go to war with Iraq, and says his decision, like much of his policymaking, was underpinned by his Christian faith." Excuse me, but divine right was for KINGS, and, anyway, divine right is over now. I can't even begin to number the ways in which Tony's observations are out of bounds, but the main one is that Tony's job is to serve British voters, most of whom did not support the Iraq war. So, not only did Tony defy his mandate, he is now at least obliquely denying the right of the voters to "judge" him. He's going to put off being judged until after he is dead. What a relief for him. And clearly, only an arrogant SOB talks about his future arraignment before the judgment seat, such as it is, in such a pompous, idle way. He intends to be answering to a higher power! I have news for you, Tony, in the Democracy, for the PM (or the Prez), there is no higher power than the voters! Pardon me while I go have a heart attack. I used to think Tony Blair was something of a tragic figure -- fooled by the idiot Bush into thinking there was a chance of getting something if he went along with Bush's war, while realizing there was no chance of getting anything if he didn't go along with it. I used to think maybe Tony had seen a hard choice, and made the wrong one in good faith. But I see that Tony is another of those folks who thinks he's been chosen by the higher power that is merely his own ego to do something stupid that he kind of wanted to do all along -- to show off. I suppose he can't be beheaded -- that went out with Charles I. But I wouldn't mind if someone slapped him silly. ___________ * Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002. She has contributed to a wide range of magazines, including The New Yorker, Elle, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The American Prospect, Practical Horseman, The Guardian Sport Monthly, Real Simple, and Playboy. Smiley's latest book is Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, a history and anatomy of the novel as a literary form (Knopf).