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• Friday, June 20, 2008 01:00 AM

  rbhannah, I've often wondered about that myself.

  All the American sites I've looked at could bwst be described as "incestuous", inward-looking and downright nasty as Americans get involved in the most pettifogging details of a candidates life. People who I suspect have no neurological qualifications are chortling with delight at the thought of spreading the rumour that John McCain is suffering from Alzheimers Disease and the suggestion that his name is linked to the Biblical Cain shows complete ignorance; it's a Scots Gaelic name whose root is "Cathain" and "Mac" or "Mc" means "son of". There are the less liberal sites also, of course, where the murder last December of the choir master of TUC, a man called Donald Young, a murder being investigated by the Chicago police, is being tenuously associated with Barack Obama. American politics has always been dirty, since the time of Nixon, but now i's absolutely filthy and, apart from Iraq, Americans seem to have no interest in the rest of the world.

  The EU is considering lifting sanctions against Cuba, over American objections, imminent civil war seems likely in Zimbabwe as Mugabe refuses to accept the result of the March vote but none of this seems to be exercising the minds of the American public whose picayune concerns involve a candidate's religion, surname, uxoriousness and so on. What a pity that America is still in a state of arrested development and is now best known for lashing out at those who resist its hegemony. It's pretty well accepted that the US is a plutocracy and not "the city on the hill" that it was once claimed to be.

  —maureenodonnell Read maureenodonnell's other letters
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