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DON'T CRY FOR ME, AMERICA

In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Evita,” a major portion of the piece consists of Eva Perón being lavishly prepared for a European tour. It is hoped that would burnish her image and provide her with a cloak of respectability. She intends, afterwards, to be vice president, next to her husband Juan Perón, the president of Argentina. Tweaking that scenario just a bit, with regard to gender, politics, countries and the haute couture wardrobe, we have, pretty much, the set-up for Barak Obama’s current invasion of the Middle East and Europe.

Barak should be alert to an Evita-like experience in Italy. Accompanied by a former naval officer, she complains that the crowds call her a whore. He responds sympathetically: “Pay them no heed, Señora Perón. It has been years since I set foot upon a naval vessel, and they still call me ‘Commodore’.” Another Evita pitfall of which Barak should be aware is being received by the Queen in a lesser castle than had been anticipated—although, there is no indication that he is to have a royal audience.

John McCain is livid! He had been berating Obama for not having visited Iraq recently, and was continually goading him to do so. Now that he is on his way, McCain accuses him of showboating—no one had counted on a Kennedy-style Barak treatment at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the expected, overflow, adoring crowds in Paris and London.

After all, McCain is recently returned from Canada, Central America and Mexico City. He was not accompanied by the anchors from the 3 major networks, which attention will assure Barak of head-of-state-type coverage. As a matter of fact, McCain’s trip to Colombia was sidelined by that dramatic jungle rescue of prisoners long held by the FARC rebels. He cannot understand the hoopla, now, over this skinny, upstart kid who is overwhelming him with intelligence, currency (both filthy lucre and being in the present), rhetoric and oratory.

Of course, that is the problem. McCain does not understand. If he had not absented himself from cyberspace and the cultural and technological changes that had been swirling about his head and unseeing eyes, he would understand. The United States and the world never expected a phenomenon such as Barak Obama to occur in our time. Just a little bit of imagination on the part of McCain would allow him to see what the “imagineers” of the world are seeing. Doesn’t he realize that the only reason he is facing Obama is the fact that this tyro out of nowhere just defeated one of the greatest political machines ever known to United States politics?!

After 5,000 years of recorded history, we have just entered the 2nd millennium of the Current Era. This continent was chanced upon just over 500 years ago. Documentation recently was uncovered confirming that the grandmother I knew in my teen years had been born, in South Carolina, about the time the Civil War began. Less than 40 years ago, the man who might become president of the United States would have been refused service at a restaurant a few blocks from where our family lived in North Philadelphia, PENNSYLVANIA—not Philadelphia, Mississippi! By the way, McCain is still trying to apologize for his strong opposition to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

I have a feeling that Barak Obama’s experience in Europe will be considerably more successful than that of Eva Perón’s. Let us hope that the aftermath for him will be cheerier for him than it was for her. She died at 35, never realizing her ambition of becoming her husband’s vice president.

Argentina did cry for Evita. There is no need for America to cry for Barak!