So, not only did Jamaica’s Usain Bolt (levitating below) set a world record in the men’s 100 meters, despite pulling up 20 meters early to celebrate and showboat…
… but, in the women’s 100, Jamaican sprinters Shelly-Ann Fraser, Sherone Simpson, and Kerron Stewart made it a clean 1-2-3 sweep (technically, a 1-2-2, actually) —
Lest we get too gassed about our favorite likkle-but-tallawa island’s dominance, however, the NYtimes puts things in humbling perspective. Maureen Dowd’s column this past Sunday, in case you missed it, bears the striking title, “Russia Is Not Jamaica.” Here’s the rubels quote —
As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”
Ah, nothing like the infantilizing frankness of good ol’ imperial discourse. In other words, run all you want, likkle pickneys. Run and get me a rum & coke.
Their performances were amazing!
And the insensitivity and arrogance of that statement is too. Sheesh
One can only try to build a culturally aware future. Arrogance, ethnocentrism, and condescension are sooooo 20th Century.
Mmmm, rum and coke.
Oops, sorry, what I meant to say is, I don’t know why Maureen Dowd still has a job. She is flip about EVERYTHING and everyone. And pretty much zero substance behind the winking, cleavage-flashing bluster.
don’t even get me started, caro. without a title like that, there’s no way dowd woulda got me to click thru to her gossip column.
Wayne, yes, like you this was the first time i was reading the highly touted Dowd, and it was the title that got me. i remember thinking that she sounded like the average columnist in the papers here (which is not really a compliment)…
Thanks, Annie. Just to clarify, this was not my first time reading Dowd, but my first time in a while — and probably the last. I gave up on her (as well as Krugman and the rest of the “liberal” columnists @ NYT — don’t get me started on the conservatives) a while ago. No reason to encumber my mornings with their drivel.
Oh, ok, get me started on the conservatives — did anyone see this lovely passage in Friedman’s column yesterday?
Ah, yes, the “African team.” For some reason, I don’t remember seeing any such team. Were they competing against the European and Asian teams? And check the title, “Melting Pot Meets Great Wall” — what a way with metaphors! It’s not the world that’s flat, pieface, it’s your prose.
i can no longer remember the last time i didn’t find dowd’s column totally exasperating. jen brea sums up friedman here: http://jenbrea.typepad.com/world_is_round/2006/11/the_world_is_fl.html#more
Dowd’s been giving Obama the Jamaica treatment (if you can call it that) for a while now.
Good one, Sean. I think she uses the oh-so-clever epithet, Obambi. Oh, Mo.