George W. Bush is a waste of space. Now he conspires to waste on space.
I am currently on my Teaching Media internship in India. Two weeks ago, my editor at Today, Delhi’s afternoon newspaper, handed me a press release. Her instructions: Head to the Oberoi Hotel, where you’ll meet Dr. Amitabh Ghosh, a planetary geologist for NASA, and discuss his work on the Mars mission.
People worldwide had just peeped the Spirit rover’s primary pictures of the Red Planet, and news of President Bush’s lunar lunacy was leaking to the media.
Apparently, our neo-Napoleon isn’t satisfied with terrestrial takeovers. This crowned cowboy craves celestial conquest, too — anything to assure the bucks stop anywhere except in commendable coffers.
If our conquistador captain were really concerned about life in the galaxy, he’d stop allowing his corporate cohorts to spoil our own soil. Stop at Red and go for green! Maybe Dubya just wants to secure a solar suburb from the soon-to-be-smog-saturated global city. Think “CEO escape” instead of “white flight.”
If the chief crusader actually cared about exploration, he’d first explore the District of Columbia east of the Anacostia River, where few Republicans have dared go before. There the average family income hasn’t increased in 20 years, according to a report by D.C. Agenda, a non-profit organization in the capital.
Or the counterfeit Columbus would send brother Jeb to Santiago de Cuba, where the boneheaded blockade harbors hunger in the empty tummies of Cuban children and gives Fidel Castro a magnet for misdirecting blame.
On the other hand, maybe a Bush-Columbus comparison isn’t so far-fetched. Christopher coveted gold. Bush covets golden campaign contributions in exchange for lucrative contracts. Fancy that Republican financiers Boeing and Lockheed Martin also are the top dogs of the aerospace industry.
With the American public tiring — hopefully — of warmongers wreaking havoc on its behalf, the administration needs fresh avenues for averting altruism and licking the hand that feeds it.
Some analysts excuse Bush’s multibillion-dollar buffoonery, saying the cost to the average American family would equal the monthly cable bill. Tell that to the 842 million people who go to bed hungry each night, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
And many — probably more than most Northwestern students would expect — in the famished fold find themselves bound by our own borders. Poet Talib Kweli perhaps puts it best: “TV got us reaching for stars/But not the one between Venus and Mars.”
Clutching notes on space rocks and rocket ships, I returned to the office in a three-wheel rickshaw. Along the route, the auto passed a troupe of monkeys loitering on the sidewalk outside of a government building.
Nostalgia nestled in my mind — India is not all that different from the United States after all. Here they have monkeys running wild. There we have monkeys running the country. And we better alleviate those apes of power soon, before Pierre Boulle’s fiction becomes fact.
Josh Miller is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
