Someone was obviously inspired by my post about Toady and decided to track down the villain:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2207514,00.html
Well how about that!! Abbas has turned out to be such a star pupil that Toady has spare time to pontificate in China (for an exorbitant fee naturally). Failed statesmanship is a very lucrative profession these days but I was struck by how quickly his hosts realized they had a bullshitter on their hands. Bird flu may have originated in China but it appears the Chinese are immune to the far more serious brain-numbing Anglo-Saxon disease that results in Blair worship. Compare the swift reaction of the Chinese media with the complaceny of their Anglo-American counterparts who, with a few notable exceptions, swooned over Blair's lies and platitudes for 10 miserable years. Were I mayor, I would unilaterally twin my town with Guangdong as a matter of principle.
Of course, it will be a very different story when Toady's road-show moves to the USA. They’ll be pumping out souvenir American baseballs by the thousands stamped with images of Toady and Bush arm-in-arm. He’ll be showered with worthless medals and doctorates and applauded on talk-shows for spouting pseudo-Churchillian nonsense about “standing together against evil” and “doing the right thing”. He’ll pose cheerfully yet meaningfully with graduates of West Point Academy and pop-up in Pennsylvania pancake houses to cement the Anglo-American alliance at the grassroots level, though always careful to make sure some hapless local picks up the tab for his eggs and bacon (the Blairs are formidable cheapskates).
All of which proves that we need to become more Chinese.
