A populist monster on a pedestal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1274037,00.html
The US reveres politicians as stars - even the corrupt Huey Long
Peter Preston in Louisiana
Monday August 2, 2004
The Guardian
Two different spots - both splattered with old, congealed blood - make
the point. We still, almost unthinkingly, see American politics as a
florid extension of our homegrown British variety. We still send our
spin doctors to sit in the Boston (or New York) convention gallery and
take notes, jotting ideas for future recycling. "Hope!" Is that a word
T Blair might make something of? Could Howard do his Romanian roots
spiel in the style of Teresa Heinz Kerry? But step far away from the
gallery.
One point of difference is there on the sixth floor of the Texas Book
Depository in Dallas, a museum of murder, an archive of assassination.
It's a crowded, successful enterprise. Stand near the clutter of book
boxes in the corner, look out of the window towards Elm Street, and
you can see almost what Lee Harvey Oswald saw down the sights of his
$12 rifle 41 years ago.
Peter Preston
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=18510aff.0312220443.5e3634a1%40posting.google.com
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