times when picture worth
thousand words – what happened to
Great in Great Britain
It was Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, the Irish writer, who said, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life“.
Mr. Wilde felt that the reason life imitated art was the, “… result not merely from Life’s imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realize that energy.”
I have no problem with this.
And I suppose there are no rules or guidelines as to which art to imitate.
And it seems that Great Britain has decided to skip ‘The Thick of It’ and ‘Yes Minister’ and go straight to imitate Monty Python.
I feel that all I have to say or can say on the subject is illustrated in the above photo.
Who are these people?
From what slime at the bottom of a genetic gene pool were they scrapped up and presented to the world as viable political leaders?
Oh Boy Howdy, but do I love this photograph.
It says it all.
All you need to know about what happened to the Great in Great Britain.
I put it to you that you had been able to take this photograph to Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin and asked, can you come up with a sketch that presents these two as the leaders of Great Britain, they might have said it was possible, but even in the World of Monty Python, who would believe it?
According to Wikipedia, “[The British Empire] At its height, was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23 per cent of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered 35.5 million km2 (13.7 million sq mi), 24 per cent of the Earth’s total land area.”
Great Britain WAS Great.
There were leaders who put the GREAT in Great Britain and it was felt all around the world.
Not arguing here if that was good or bad but I will say this.
I remember talking with a friend years ago who had just spent time in Canada and Australia and I asked her what she felt those folks thought about the US and the relationship with Britain and those countries.
Her response was that the people she met regarded the US as the country that was able to get out, but I digress.
As I was saying, one time Britain had a hand in the live of a quarter of the worlds peoples and a say over a a quarter of the lands available in the world.
Now they make deals where they don’t even know if they are or aren’t or maybe might be in charge of Northern Ireland.
The picture illustrated the article, Why is British politics a raging bin-fire? Don’t ask the misunderstood heroes who held the torches, by Marina Hyde.
Ms. Hyde writes that these leaders fell they failed because their, ” … visions have been betrayed by someone or other in one way or another, when the reality is they were undone by such trifles as “the voters”, “reality” and “the consequences of their own actions”.
Ms. Hyde finishes with “it’s possible – just possible – that the real victims of betrayal are not all these politicians, but the public.”
As the Pythons would say, “Now … for something completely different …”
Notice, they didn’t say better.
No Haiku For You 