Political animals?
Once upon a time, we used to wake up, drink our coffee and maybe exchange a friendly good morning with a neighbor. The other day, I woke up just before 7 a.m., switched on the television to if there was any important news and came across an update on the bird flu problem. I turned the sound down but the birds continued to plague me. A Turkish farmer appears on the screen with a bunch of dead turkeys in either hand. Today I won’t be cooking chicken even if scientists reassure us that the virus poses no risk to humans. The first coffee of the day has a strange aftertaste, like chicken soup – hardly surprising as we have been veritably bombarded with pictures of dead birds, as we had been before with images of former deputy economy minister Adam Regouzas at an incriminating shindig. Our insight into the political world is chiefly gained through politicians such as Regouzas who appear frequently on television. But through them we only gain snippets of information, small pieces of a puzzle which we never get to see in its entirety. After the disastrous Hurricane Katrina came our own «Hurricane Regouzas,» as TV channels dubbed the recent scandal which led to the deputy minister’s resignation. Man might be a political animal but there comes a time when he can no longer endure television’s series on corruption.
