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If I work at it, I suppose I can begin to share the excitement of a regional appearance on the world stage as the leaders of eight big-time nations gather in Denver later this week.
Doubtless they will discuss important matters, such as contriving a common explanation as to why it is inflationary and a threat to the stability of the emerging global economy if someone making $6 an hour gets a raise to $6.25, but a boon to humanity if someone who made $10 million last year gets paid $15 million this year.
They may also address issues of contention between nations, but I doubt that they can settle anything.
Look at this country. Gen. Winfield Scott forced a triumphant treaty on Mexico in 1848, but Mexican occupation of the Southwest remains an issue. Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia 132 years ago but still the Confederate flag remains an issue.
On an even more mundane level, Salida acquired the
county courthouse from Buena Vista in a 1928 election, and
yet I still encounter Buena Vistans who are mad about this
theft
of the same county seat they stole from
Granite in 1880.
Just why a town wants a courthouse baffles me. A courthouse of necessity attracts politicians, lawyers, jail inmates and journalists -- four varieties of humanity held in low esteem these days. Why go out of your way to entice them?
Much the same could be said of an international summit, which naturally involves politicians, journalists, spin doctors, bureaucrats, paper pushers, security agents -- why would sane people want all this to descend upon them?
One reason, from what I can gather, is that it could
produce favorable publicity for the host venue as all these
international journalists gather, discover that they won't
get any real news from the flacks and spin controllers who
script the press conferences, and file local color
stories
in order to justify their outrageous
expense-account spending to corporate headquarters.
And in turn, these tales presumably make corporate
executives think Denver sounds like a great place to do
business, so let's move our headquarters there and provide
thousands of great jobs,
or else well-heeled foreign
readers will think I'd never heard of Denver before and
it sounds like a really exciting and interesting place, so
the next time we want to spend $5,000 a day on a vacation,
let's go there.
To that end, I gather, Denver has made elaborate preparations for the wining and dining of the herd of journalists. And as a civic-minded fellow, as well as someone concerned with the well-being of my fellow professionals, I offer this local-color story -- they're free to file it with the home office, thus saving them a few hours of contriving something that will suit an editor thousands of miles away, and then go back to the important work of being wined and dined.
HOST CITY OFFERS DISTINCTIVE SHOWCASE TO WORLD
DENVER -- First-time visitors here are often amazed to discover that this vibrant metropolis, known as the 1.609-Kilometer-High City for its elevation above mean sea level, is not actually in the Rocky Mountains. However, the outlines of the soaring peaks to the west are visible on many days.
The city, founded in 1859 by gold miners, has a long history of multi-ethnic awareness, as evidenced by several proposed state constitutions which forbade voting by blacks, the lynching of Chinese residents and the extermination and expulsion of the Utes, Cheyenne and Arapaho.
More recently, though, the food courts of its shopping malls have begun to offer a wide variety of international cuisine.
Its progressive policies have come to the fore lately with proposals for public financing of $180 million for a new football stadium, shortly after the police swept the city's two main waterways, Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, to eject people living in burrows and shanties.
The city offers handsome and attractive architecture along its major thoroughfares, such as North Federal Boulevard and South Colorado Boulevard, true showplaces of modern American urban design.
And finally, Denver can also take justifiable pride in
its educated population, many of whom continue their
life-long learning programs by listening to books on
tape
while idling during their commutes to and from
work on the city's state-of-the-art petroleum-consumption
gridlock transportation system.
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