Posted by Dan Ewert : 7/16/2002 01:16:00 AM (Archive Link)
A question has occurred to me recently as I’ve watched the news or read the newspaper. The images from dictatorship countries or other leader-worship nations many times have a picture of said leader in them. A giant banner of Arafat, Kim Il Sung’s mug occupying the side of a building, Mao everywhere in China, Lenin everywhere in the old Soviet Union. I once read a joke that’s popular in Iraq… an Iraqi man brings his broken black and white TV to the shop to get fixed. The repairman takes out the tube and pastes a nice picture of Saddam Hussein on the screen. When the TV owner protests, the repairman’s response is, “What? Not only did I fix it, but now it’s in color!” The point and punch line, of course, is the ubiquity of Saddam’s image in Iraq. So my curiosity is this… are the people who immigrate to the United States from these countries at all surprised that we don’t have pictures and statues of George Bush all over the place? Nor do we have founding father images scattered about the cityscape? All we have are a few modest monuments here or there, maybe a little bigger in D.C. I wonder if the poor souls in those nations think everybody has the big leader displays.