Monday, May 21st, 2012
WE ARE ALWAYS told that the world is getting smaller. It is. Global communications mean that we can contact anyone anywhere at virtually any time of the day or night.
Yet we always seems to be going round and round in circles. Nobody knows where anywhere is?.
Where the fuck are we?
Americans are a standing joke on this from President G. W. Bush to Sarah Palin through to Michelle Bachmann. They are not alone, though. Across a large part of the globe people volunteer this ignorance on a regular basis.
Former US president, Gerald Ford, once announced on the steps of Airforce One: “It is really nice to be here in Iowa.” He was in Ohio. Then there was Dick Cheney, former vice-president of the US in the George W. Bush administration, who when speaking on the subject of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, said:
“The people of Peru deserve better in their leadership but this is a matter that they have to resolve themselves.”
Still not there yet
Even President Obama claimed on the record that he “had visited 57 states and had just one more to go”. There are only 50. CNN in one of its broadcasts on the Afghan refugee problem, located Afghanistan where Syria is.
A friend of mine staying in upstate New York was greeted on presenting his UK passport with: “British! Where’s that?” The receptionist compounded the mistake by believing that it was somewhere in the US. He is not alone. I heard someone recently, who claimed with all sincerity, that Spain bordered Italy.
What the deuce…
We love sniping at the Americans for their actual and perceived ignorance but we are pretty good at it ourselves. A wild-card entry to this year’s Junior Wimbledon Tournament, 16-year-old Hassan Ndayishimiye, is the first player from Burundi to play at Wimbledon.
When a BBC commentator asked people where Burundi was, only one of them could even hazard a guess: “Africa?” He said hesitatingly. “But I’m not certain.” Admittedly, Burundi is a small country and less well known than its blood-stained neighbour, Rwanda, but why don’t people have a clue where anything is?
Shape-shifters
We are overwhelmed with rolling news, a globalised media, papers from all corners of the universe and wall-to-wall Internet access all with annotated maps, yet none of it seems to permeate into our consciousness. We continue going round and round in circles
A comical Australian piece on YouTube juxtaposed North Korea and South Korea with Australia and Tasmania on a map and one US citizen opined: “I had no idea that North Korea was so much bigger than the South.”
If knowledge is power: what price a Bachmann or Palin presidency?
Ed Hart, wowdewow philosopher king, knows where he is. Most of the time
Do you have difficulty knowing where your are? Confessions welcome
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Tags: barundi, bush, dick cheney, gerald ford, global communications, going round and round in circles, Palin
