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“The Bonfire of the Vanities” is of course the book by Tom Wolfe. I am only really familiar with the film adaptation but it is a fine story. Of things Tom Wolfe, the upcoming (2009) film “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test” is one which I am awaiting with much impatience: the book was a real humdinger of a trip.
Back to the title of this blog post, though. Tomorrow (April 24) my vainglorious little city is hosting the Olympic Torch Relay spectacle. Perhaps some acid would make an otherwise silly event significantly more entertaining and at the bare minimum at least impressively more silly.
It is indeed a bonfire of great vanity to expect that the world will be more entranced by a torch relay than by the sputtering candle of human rights which it has come to represent to so many in the present context.
Apparently there is all sorts of spectacle going on this morning along the torch’s route. Pro-China and Pro-Tibet protesters; there is a hot-air balloon with a Tibet-related banner unfurled...
At this point the Torch Relay hasn’t actually started 0831 hrs one arrest so far. There are apparently thousand of protesters. It should be entertaining.
Good or bad publicity is still, yes, publicity - but at least a discerning mind can see to the heart of what is actually being signified (Tibet, Human Rights by the signifier (the torch relay), not what is intended to be signified (Beijing 2008).
The Torch Relay - not so much a ”Long March”, as a series of short sprints...
