tanzanian bushman
by Mark Hunter Mulvey
Published: February 20, 2008
President Bush gave Tanzania’s president, who played basketball as a youth, a pair of Shaquille O’Neal’s shoes Sunday, along with millions of dollars to help combat disease and poverty in the east African country.
- Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (CNN)
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
- William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act III, Sc. V
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It is a cold February evening in 2008, and I am tired of lazy opinions.
The U.S. has now endured over seven straight years of a feisty Republican president’s reign, and an equal amount of time hearing detractors hurling the same insults and negative press in a desperate plea for impeachment. My problem is not with the thoughts being expressed, but with the lack of imagination used to express them. And so, propelled by journalistic apathy, I began a search for a single piece of current, positive press on George W. Bush. I felt that the sheer contrast in reading such a piece would grab hold of my psyche and spin me out of my belief in this Editorial Rut.
Success! Bush arrives in Tanzania bearing gift to fight poverty. It turns out Bush toted size-23 basketball shoes and a newfound humanitarian spirit to a Tanzanian hospital on February 17th, with the signing of a $698 million grant to follow. The funding is to prevent the spread of malaria, and the shoes are to prevent the spread of pulled hammies.
Furthermore, Bush “has requested $30 billion over the next five years for the program.” In addition to Tanzania, the African tour stops at Benin, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia, all in an attempt to rid the continent of disease and poverty. U2 singer Bono, who famously urged the president to look to Africa’s poverty as a humanitarian crisis, is clearly pleased: “President Bush has every reason to be proud of what he and so many others have accomplished in Africa,” he said in a statement.
However, the most insightful and weighty thoughts on the African Trip have been articulated by African citizens themselves, and most are curiously hesitant. Robert Mng’anya, a banking specialist in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, cautions, “I think it is a good thing that President Bush is visiting Tanzania, although we must be careful. If you look at what has happened in other countries you can see that America has a tendency to interfere. This sometimes leads to a lot of problems.”
It was here that my search for originality-of-thought ended. I was finally witness to an African banker echoing, in an artfully restrained way, the same sentiment barked by anti-Bush zealots stateside. The only conclusion I can hope to draw from these parallels is the notion that the truest reaction to Bush initiatives can only be suspicion. My honest path to seek out some twenty-first century optimism led me right back to the ubiquitous negativity I sought to escape. Bush has spent his presidency constructing a nasty feedback loop, and I want nothing more than to escape.
I am now looking forward to a cold November evening in 2008, when the loop is finally broken.
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