A Question of Audience Participation

The arrest of Karadzic has brought us back to chapter of recent “Western” culture that most of us have worked very hard to forget. Today I read of how the the former philosopher king of the Bosnian Serb Republic once invited a fellow poet, the Russian Limonov, to have lunch with him in Pale, the mountain resort overlooking the city of Sarajevo. Since the beginning of the attack on Bosnia, inspired in large measure by the ideas and policies of Karadzic, Pale had undergone a transformation of function. The cool mountain breezes, which once attracted those seeking peace from the hustle bustle of the city below during the heat of summer, now served as a stimulant for the commission of rapes upon Bosnian women and the sportive shelling and machine gunning of those in the urban valley who were slow to get with the new logic of ethnic cleansing. Before sitting down to eat, Karadzic offered Limonov the “aperitif” of taking a few potshots at the unfortunate ants below. The Russian poet accepted the gracious offer and fired off a few rounds. See video here. The two bards then went off, it is said, for a meal of roast pig followed by a solidarity-building round of slivovitz with the young soldier-rapists on watch.

Disgusting.

But is it any more disgusting then the time that George Bush, sitting before the near entirety of the Washington press corps in 2004 made jokes, complete with hide-and-seek pantomimes, about someday finding the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? When the butcher of Bosnia did his schtick with his Russian brother in letters, no more than a few aides and a cameraman were there to laugh or applaud. Bush, however, was lucky enough to have an entire auditorium full of people giggling and tittering in the thrall of his self-evident charm.

I guess that’s why Karadzic will be going to the Hague for war crimes while Bush will be heading to Crawford, Texas to cut brush and ride trail bikes until such time as he is overcome by either arthritis or Alzheimer´s.