Bobby Gillespie has apparently been beaten up in Madrid. Probably wasn’t because of the Scream’s new album – he has a tendency to mouth off extremely stupid things about world politics, especially Israel/Palestine – but it should have been, ’cause it’s terrible. Shame, really, I like XTRMNTR a lot (despite the stupid politics) and wish they’d do more in the same vein.
And also in stupid politics, Bush has confounded even the harshest of critics’ expectations with his truly awe-inspiring CCTV-monitored conversation with Blair, who doesn’t exactly distinguish himself either. I mean, “Yo Blair“? Come on, this is the leader of the free world we’re talking about here and he sounds like he’s just got his first Myspace profile.
Much of the media are, like the sheep that they are, focusing on the fact that Bush refers to the Israel/Lebanon situation using the word “shit”, which is really the least interesting thing about the transcript (a better translated, but incomplete version is on the BBC website) – in fact, more interesting is that he refers to it as “ironic”, which indicates a complete lack of understanding of what irony is. The conversation does indicate that Bush has some kind of control, but in a very “folksy” and unprofessional way; it also shows his complete dislike for all things “ceasefire”, unsurprisingly.
It’s a must see document, mainly because we shouldn’t be seeing it – although all professional politicians are supposedly trained to treat mics as live at all times, so who knows why it them so long to turn it off? Oh well, it’s one of the few times that we actually get to see the real, un-stage-managed, Special Relationship, and for that we must be thankful to whoever left the mic on.
F L I C K E R I N G / F R A M E 