Bianca

This week's New Statesman diary is by Bianca Jagger. Is there a better personification of radical chic?

She tells us of her two recent visits to Hamburg, "this beautiful city". Her first visit was to pick up the World Achievement Award at the Women's World Awards. Congratulations Bianca! The second was to open the Special Olympic Games, where, at the ceremony, she met Agnes Wessalowski:

Agnes, who was born with Down's syndrome, won a gold medal in the swimming competition. She is full of life and enormous courage

Doesn't she know that it's compulsory now for Down's Syndrome sufferers to be full of life and have enormous courage? What they appreciate more than anything else, of course, is being patronised.

She reads something about herself in the paper: that she's considering running for president of Nicaragua. Not true, alas.

Just a slight whiff by now of someone who's really rather fond of herself, in, you know, a very humble sort of way.

So on, inevitably, to Iraq, and:

the cabal of George W Bush and Tony Blair, who continue to repeat their discredited mantra regarding weapons of mass destruction and the link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. This despite the irrefutable evidence that there were no WMDs and no link.

Irrefutable evidence? Does she know something no else knows? To which the answer must be: not a chance.

Reminiscences of life in Central America follow, and the horrors of those nasty dictators (US-backed, of course) like Somoza. Fair enough; but you get the drift by now. The US is bad. They support nasty people. And, um, that's it. Hey, once you've settled on a political philosophy that works for you, why change it?

Comments

[David Gillies]

I fondly recall a P. J. O'Rourke essay on the Nicaraguan elections (the one where they kicked the Sandinistas out). He writes of encountering Bianca Jagger in an airport terminal the day after, looking sad and forlorn and crumpled. Previously, she'd been everywhere, doing the radical chic thing and looking cute while supporting a bunch of murderous thugs. It's written in typical scorched-earth O'Rourke style and can't be too highly recommended. It's in 'Give War A Chance', if I remember correctly.

[David Gillies]

Oh, and how the hell can two people be a cabal?