I know I promised not too long ago that I was not going to write about the impending war, but a friend of mine from another country keeps asking me to explain it to him. Which is very hard to do because so little of it makes any sense. But I will give it a shot for him. If you re sick of reading about war and care not about anyone else s opinion, I ask you to stop now and move on the News of the Weird or the personals or something. But to my friend: I think most of the people in the country in question are innocent and don t want war and just want to go about their lives and let peace have a chance. But they are led by a man who is hell bent on killing. It doesn t matter what his people think, or what any other country in the world thinks, he wants to get out the bombs and weapons of mass destruction and wreak havoc. He makes wild remarks during his speeches and punches the air when he talks. He thinks he can get away with anything he wants. If foreigners are simply suspected of doing something against his government, they are detained in cages like animals and do not have the right to an attorney or anyone else who might clear their innocence, even though some of them were probably working on charity missions and were rounded up by mistake. If a popular entertainer from the country makes a disparaging remark about this leader, her CDs are laid out on the ground and crushed by giant trucks. Slowly but surely, his citizens are losing all of their basic civil rights, such was the case recently with a father and son who refused to remove their Give Peace a Chance t-shits in a shopping mall and were arrested by the country s police. This government only attacks countries that are much smaller and less equipped to defend themselves. Instead of trying to do something about the hideous human rights violations going on in much larger, more threatening countries, such as China, they go for the little guys whose country is already so poor thousands of children die every year from lack of food and medical care. This leader does not even attempt to communicate with the leader of the country he wants to bomb. He s a very impatient man and would rather just go to war. He tries to bribe other countries with billions of dollars of his people s tax money in order to get them to go along with him and let his forces use their country as an added advantage to massacring another country nearby. He makes television appearances trying to brainwash his people into agreeing with his every move. Any sentiment not in his favor is considered non-patriotic. I just don t know, my friend, why the George W. Bush administration here in the United States is acting this way. None of us really understand it, especially since he claims so fervently to be a man of God. I guess we ll just have to wait and see what he does next. In the meantime, and on a lighter note, I have to let the people in my city know a little about what s going on their town this week, so they can try to live their lives without so much fear. So this is for the people of Memphis. Tonight, pick you venue. At the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, this evening s Calla Lilly Dinner Evening in conjunction with the Georgia O Keefe and the Calla Lilly in American Art exhibit features a tour of the exhibit, champagne and hors d oeuvres, and a three-course wine dinner at The Brushmark. Over at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, it s Third Thursdays: Art After Dark at The Dixon, which includes viewing art, partaking of Italian wine and beer, and a screening of Federico Fellini s film The Road Shake & Stir Thursdays with 107.5 The Pig at Capriccio Bar in The Peabody, with live jazz by Gary Johns. And B.B. King himself is at his namesake club, B.B. King s on Beale Street.
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