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Most of the foreign news these days seems bizarre and confusing: free demonstrations then brutal repression in China, a once-outlawed union now taking part in the Polish government, the peaceful replacement of Khomeini in Iran when the timing seemed perfect for a civil war.
The more foreign news and analysis I read, the more perplexing it becomes. But America might be just as confusing if our own news were presented the same way to us. Just imagine what an American roundup on some foreign network might be like:
While a major American defense contractor has continued to deny that there are any safety problems at the Rocky Flats Thermonuclear Warhead Trigger Fabrication Facility in Colorado, a national government agency, which sent in dozens of investigators, has announced that its probe would take at least another week, and that substantive questions have been raised concerning the safety of the facility.
Meanwhile, the governor of Colorado has indicated he may be forced to find a way to close Rocky Flats, in order to protect his citizens from plutonium, tritium and various transuranic wastes which America cannot find a safe place to store. However, federal agents have not moved to arrest the governor for threatening to close Rocky Flats, even though several members of a radical environmental organization were recently arrested for precisely the same thing -- threatening to close Rocky Flats.
In the American capitol of Washington, a city named after their great revolutionary leader, corruption continues to fester behind the gleaming marble facades of the public buildings.
Newt Gingrich of Georgia led the charge to force Jim Wright of Texas out of the American Congress. Gingrich charged that Wright had taken advantage of a loophole in the law on a peculiar book royalty schedule. However, Gingrich has also enjoyed the proceeds of peculiar book royalties.
So far, the latest round of the Great Ethical Purge has claimed Wright and Tony Coelho, another congressional leader. On the other side of the aisle, the 1989 liquidation of moral questionables has also claimed Mark Goodin, a member of the Central Committee of the Grand Old Party, and earlier this year, there was John Tower, who lost his bid to become secretary of defense.
Further developments are expected in an unfolding scandal in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
As we understand it, the American government was up to its usual tricks. They start by announcing and then appropriating ample funds for a program that sounds good for helping poor people. In this case, the idea was to provide good housing for America's poor -- except they call them
economically impaired.But once the program is implemented, the only ones who receive any of that tax money are the Americans who already enjoy wealth and power. One such member of the American elite collected $800,000 for making a few telephone calls to arrange meetings between developers and federal officials. And now some of those developers are under investigation, too.
As a final note in tonight's American roundup, the Rev. Jerry Falwell announced that he was closing his influential religious pressure group, the Moral Majority. It was widely credited with helping elect some of the people who appointed some of the people we just mentioned earlier in connection with various ethical scandals.
Falwell said the Moral Majority had served its purpose by injecting decency, honesty and other moral values into the mainstream of American public life. The announcement, however, did not say what planet Falwell was speaking from.
And that's the way it is in America. Good night.
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