Guardian UK: Elephants, dancing girls and Wall Street

[marmar]

Elephants, dancing girls and Wall Street
The election circus distracts from serious issues, but the US economic crisis isn't a sideshow Republicans can avoid

Sasha Abramsky
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday September 23 2008 21:00 BST



Taken as a whole, the Bush administration's economic record is by far the most dismal of any administration since Herbert Hoover's. Median income in America is lower, in real terms, today than when George Bush became president nearly eight years ago. That's the first time since the Great Depression that median income has fallen over such a prolonged period. The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line is higher today than eight years ago. The number of people on food stamps is at an all-time high, and food banks and churches around the country report extraordinary increases over the past few years in the numbers of Americans relying on charity food to survive. And the country's banking system, after decades of deregulation promoted by conservative ideologues, increasingly looks like a house of cards.

So, if today's Caesars aren't delivering on the bread front, they'd better at least remedy the situation with a damned good circus. After all, as the Romans knew all too well, people get angry when their bread disappears and their entertainment isn't top notch. Yet a funny thing happened when my wife and I took our children to the circus in Sacramento a couple Sundays ago.

To put it bluntly, when the elephants came onstage, for reasons unknown they began shitting copiously, one after the other. I've never seen anything quite like it at a circus before, and I daresay most of the people in the audience hadn't either. The elephants would walk a few steps, stop for a minute, and when they started again, there would be great piles of dull yellow balls of elephant crap in the spaces they'd just vacated.

The circus owners did a good job of diverting the audience's attention. Beautiful dancing girls swept onto the stage, their scanty clothing and fine figures almost taking my eyes away from the men with buckets and pails who rushed onto the scene, dodging in between the enormous elephants, scooped up the crap and quickly scattered sand atop the leftovers.

If it's a choice between watching dour-looking men shovelling turds or beautiful women dancing in sequined leotards, hell I'm as much a red-blooded American as the next guy. You want to titillate me, be my guest.

But here's the rub. No matter how entertaining the dancers were to look at, this part of the show was supposed to star the elephants, not the back-up girls. And, from where I sat, in section 202, row C, the elephants were busily expressing their true feelings for the audience by voiding all over the stage. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/23/uselections2008.useconomy