At Least He Can Probably Pronounce “India”

The wonderful Arundhati Roy has a typically scathing article in The Nation about Shrub’s visit to India, where he’ll be speaking not to the Parliament (whose members have a nasty habit of thinking for themselves and speaking up, and cannot be arrested and ejected the way American citizens can), but at a medeival fort that also contains the Delhi zoo. She says,

George Bush’s audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings, who in India go under the category of “eminent persons.” They’re mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries.

So what’s going to happen to George W. Bush? Will the gorillas cheer him on? … Will the crocs recognize a kindred soul? Will the quails give thanks that Bush isn’t traveling with Dick Cheney, his hunting partner with the notoriously bad aim? Will the CEOs agree?

She is particularly incensed, with good reason, at the idea of Shrub visiting the Gandhi memorial, which is indeed a bit like Tom Metzger visiting the Lorraine Motel (although in fact Metzger is probably too honest to do so).