Mark Steyn: 'I'll have the rhino,' I said

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 08/31/2002 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

In his Guardian column this week, our old friend George Monbiot argued persuasively that poverty made people happier: "In southern Ethiopia, for example," wrote George, "the poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls."

He's so right. That's why I'm glad I made the effort to attend the opening gala of the Earth Summit, truly a night to remember. The banqueting suite of Johannesburg's Michelangelo Hotel was packed as Bob Mugabe warmed up the crowd with a few gags: "I don't know about you," he said, "but I'm starving millions of people!" The canned laughter - an authentic recording of happy Ethiopian peasants clutching their bellies and corpsing - filled the room.

After the chorus of native dancers clad only in packing cases and palm leaves, Natalie Cole came on to sing her famous anthem to industrial development, "Unsustainable/That's what you are", and 65,000 of the world's most eligible bureaucrats, NGO executive council members and BBC environmental correspondents crowded the dance floor to glide cheek to cheek under a glitter ball of premium ox dung specially flown in from Bangladesh. It glittered because of the 120,000 flies buzzing around it, their gossamer wings dappling the international activists below in a myriad of enchanting shadows.

And then I saw her. She was wearing a low-cut dress and had the most fabulous pair of melons. "Holy cow!" I said, as she approached my table. "They've gotta be genetically modified!"
"No," she said, sliding into the chair opposite and giving me a good look at them. "They're all natural." She tossed them to Kofi Annan. "They're for his organic juggling routine." I had to laugh. Sabine Arounde is the Belgian delegate to Unescam, the United Nations Expensive Summits & Conferences Agenda Monopolisers and, lemme tellya, when she's in a room the rising temperatures are nothing to do with fossil fuel emissions.

"We met at Durban," I reminded her.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "The conference on world health"
"Racism," I corrected her.

"Yeah, right," she said. "This one's more my bag. I'm very into S&M."

"Come again?" I said.

"Sustainable Alternative Natural Development Mechanisms," said Sabine.

We were interrupted by the waiter, as oleaginous as a tanker spill. "Will sir and madam be having the Beluga caviar, foie gras, lobster and magnum of champagne?"
"Certainly not!" I snapped. "The papers back home are full of stories about how we're all scoffing the caviar and chugging down the bubbly while just a mile down the road the locals are holding the Distended Belly of the Week competition. In compliance with Foreign Office guidelines, I'll just stick with Set Menu B."

"An excellent choice," he said. "Would sir prefer the mako shark soup or the black rhino confit on a bed of Amazonian mahogany leaves?"
"I'll have the rhino," I said, "followed by the lightly poached panda with a goldenseal salad and two green-cheeked parrot's eggs over easy."

"And would sir like to see the wine list?"
"Just bring me a Scotch and humpback whale oil on the rocks."

As Sabine ordered, she looked coolly into my eyes and Natalie Cole's voice wafted across the room to capture the moment: "Like a cloud of smog that clings to me/How the thought of you does things to me" The orchestra pit had been converted into an authentic replica of a Rwandan latrine and, even as Natalie sang the line, it sprang to life in a hundred dancing fountains of E. coli-infected martini.

"There's something heady in the air tonight," I murmured.

"It's the CO2 ," purred Sabine.

Four hours later, the exhausted UN lovely, her spent body glistening with the heat of passion, lay back on the shards of her shattered headboard. "Wow!" she whimpered, struggling for breath. "Now that's what I call sustainable growth. You are incredible!"
"UN seen nothin' yet, baby," I said. Yet, to my extreme annoyance, who should burst through the door but everybody's favourite Guardian columnist. "You know, of course, George Monsanto," said Sabine, hastily pulling the tigerskin bedspread around her.

"Monbiot!" I said. "I thought you were running away from the Guardian to join the gaily pealing fields of Gamo Gofa."

"I am. I'm on my way to Ethiopia right now. But I just wanted to stop in and thank you for coming here, eating the caviar, drinking the champagne, sucking the praline-flavoured centres out of the individually wrapped Belgian chocolates on your king-sized bed, and blowing all the billions of western taxpayers' dollars. Without your sacrifice, those poor industrialised chumps would have even more money to spend on double glazing, making their pathetic lives even more worthless and hollow."

"You're right," said Sabine. "But I don't know how much longer I can sustain this level of sustainable development conferencing."

"Rather you than me," said George. "I can't wait to be just a happy, laughing Ethiopian peasant."

"Better hurry up," said Sabine. "Male life expectancy in Ethopia is 42.88 years."

"Abyssinia," I said, giving George a cheery wave.

[Savage Beast]

Post #19: I know a lesbian couple who adopted a little girl from an African situation like you describe. Some people here on FR thought they shouldn't have been allowed to.

[gcruse]

"Abyssinia," I said, giving George a cheery wave.

"Israel pleasure," I he responded.  "Hey, watch out
for Arafat; Egypt me.  But, I say  Ethiope, ethidown.
Heheh.  Just remember our motto, "it's zimbabwe trust.""

[Mike Darancette]

Sure there is! As long as you are sitting in your air-conditioned home...

George Monbiot and his ilk are beyond being Liberals, Socialists, or even Communist; they are heartless, xenophobic monsters and would be quite at home in Goebbels' Germany.

I finally decided about 1978 that I was really a Conservative after all. I knowingly chose a philosophy that would get me referred to as heartless, uncaring, eliteist and out of touch.

But, let me tell you that the plight of some of the worlds people gets to me big time. Mind you it's not their living conditions per se that bothers me but rather that no one seems to be offering an answer that would allow them to identify and solve their own problem; which I believe is all most of the world needs.

It seems that these Fascists believe that only poverty is sustainable in today's world, that we leave the third world alone and reduce the "footprint" of the rest of the developed world accordingly - the greater the achievement the greater the reduction.

With the whims of fortune it is hard to sustain anything, even in one's own life as the fluctuations of the stock market over the last few years will attest. On a global basis there are floods, droughts, wars, jihads, earthquakes and all matter of natural and man made disasters. We must eliminate those events we can and empower those most vulnerable to withstand the rest.

I can only think of two truly sustainable worlds; Heaven and Hell. I choose to believe that we must strive toward the former.

[goldstategop]

I couldn't stop laughing! Just when you think Mark Steyn doesn't get any funnier he does! This is one of the best parodies I've ever seen in print of the U.N Environmental Confab in Johannesburg. Steyn has fun with just about every environmental fad and then some. And you wonder why folks back home don't think what's going on over there in Africa is the theater of the absurd. Seen through Steyn's eyes the goings on at the latest shindig to post modern revivalism present and future takes on outrageous proportions. Rest assured, once you're through with the article, just about the only people not laughing are those who make a Mata Hari living off planetary crises galore.

[MeekOneGOP]

Mark Steyn: 'I'll have the rhino,' I said

Excerpt:

After the chorus of native dancers clad only in packing cases and palm leaves, Natalie Cole came on to sing her famous anthem to industrial development, "Unsustainable/That's what you are", and 65,000 of the world's most eligible bureaucrats, NGO executive council members and BBC environmental correspondents crowded the dance floor to glide cheek to cheek under a glitter ball of premium ox dung specially flown in from Bangladesh. It glittered because of the 120,000 flies buzzing around it, their gossamer wings dappling the international activists below in a myriad of enchanting shadows.

< snip >

We were interrupted by the waiter, as oleaginous as a tanker spill. "Will sir and madam be having the Beluga caviar, foie gras, lobster and magnum of champagne?"
"Certainly not!" I snapped. "The papers back home are full of stories about how we're all scoffing the caviar and chugging down the bubbly while just a mile down the road the locals are holding the Distended Belly of the Week competition. In compliance with Foreign Office guidelines, I'll just stick with Set Menu B."

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[goldstategop]

Natalie Cole? Somehow I can't picture golden oldies and liberals together in the same room!

[Brian Allen]

<< Never had panda, sounds yummy... >>

Is.

Tastes just a bit too much like koala, though -- with a slight aftertaste of Rawandan gorilla.

I'm more into platapus.

Now THERE's a tasty dish!

[Koala leaning to dolphin -- Yum!]

[Brian Allen]

<< Some people here on FR thought they shouldn't have been allowed to. >>

I reckon the Civilized ones -- those of US into basic decency and Moral Integrity and keen to protect children FRom deviants -- and other old fashioned stuff like that -- still reckon that.

Don'tcha know?

[Saturnalia]

Hot damn and good for them. I've seen several (non-lesbian mind you) couples adopting from SE Asia, but I have not been aware of any adopting from that neck of the woods.
Always nice to hear about something like that.

[Savage Beast]

The child was much better off than she would have been as a starving, disease-ridden orphan in the middle of a war zone.

[iconoclast]

BUMP

[facedown]

We were interrupted by the waiter, as oleaginous as a tanker spill.

Truly no one but Steyn can write like this!

[another cricket]

The child was much better off than she would have been as a starving, disease-ridden orphan in the middle of a war zone.

Yes. Now let me expand a little on that. I don't think that single or gay adoption is what is best for a child.

(let me finish before you jump me)

What is best is a man and a woman who have a stable marriage, are in their thirties and are able to support the child and there should be at least one sibling either already there or planed for. That is what is BEST. You should never doubt or lose sight of that.

However, in adoption as in life you often have to take what is better. Because best does not just waltz in the front door. Best often does not waltz in at all. So you take gay and single and older and less financially stable and only child adopters and couples whose marriage is not as stable as you would like. You do this because you have older children and you have handicapped children and you have children with problems and this is better then where they are.

I seek for the best but I will take better in a heartbeat rather then leave a child in a situation like that.

a.cricket

[dcwusmc]

Cute, very cute. Thanks!

[jalisco555]

The child was much better off than she would have been as a starving, disease-ridden orphan in the middle of a war zone.

Ah, but think of the authenticity she has been deprived of.

[jalisco555]

Yep. As the saying goes, "the best is the enemy of the good".

[gcruse]

:)

[Savage Beast]

I agree, Crick.