News from Around the World

This reminds us of a Chinese fortune cookie we read recently:

I've been to that beach, folks. There are no rocks; there are no stones on that beach. But Bill Clinton with cameras up on the hill overlooking the beach decided to take a stroll as a lone man; out there on the horizon, a lone battleship. Bill Clinton strolling along in pensive, sensitive, deep-caring thought. All of a sudden Clinton stops. He looks down; he notices something. Why, it's a pile of rocks, on a beach where there are none! Bill Clinton, with tear now beginning to stream from his eye, kneels down and arranges, with the photographers and TV cameras all focused from atop the hill, overlooking the beach. Bill Clinton kneels down and places those stones, which had to be put there by somebody, into the shape of a cross. The battleship is in the background. He knew exactly where to stop. The battleship was told where to be, stones were placed so that he would be right in the line of fire for those cameras shooting the beach and the Clinton leaned down and placed those stones. This is the man who wrote once of having "loathing the military." It was an entirely, purely staged event. But did the press see it as such? Heck, no, the press themselves started crying. "What a man. What a president. Look at how he cares!" They marveled at this miracle of the stones on the beach. But then, it was but two days later, Clinton found himself at an American war dead cemetery in Italy, and each grave had planted a little, tiny American flag.