Sunday Sundry
Oh for the good old days, when megalomaniac tyrants had a sense of style. Who wouldn’t want to be under Mussolini’s thumb, knowing those brass knuckles were from Bulgari! And Saddam Hussein’s palaces were obvious homages to MGM classics; at least one of his wives had to be Norma Shearer. But Muammar Qaddafi evidently shops at Target. Perusing the architecture and decor of his homes, the New York Times was dismayed by his tackiness.
Given Colonel Qaddafi’s noted flamboyance, the residences of the House of Qaddafi were not quite as grand as people might have supposed.
They lacked the faux grandeur of Saddam Hussein’s marbled palaces. There are no columns that bear the colonel’s initials, or fists cast to resemble his hands or river-fed moats with voracious carp.
His overt support of terrorism apparently is not so abhorent as his interior decorating. The man’s style is “Seventies”. His epauletted wardrobe may have been “Sergeant Pepper” but his living room was “The Wonder Years.” Qaddafi probably had kept plastic covers on his nuclear reactors.
The New York Times is so disappointed in him.
This Week in History:
August 28: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/08/28/a-fool-and-his-empire/
August 29: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/08/29/cheeri-opium-2/
August 30: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/08/30/fanny-get-your-gun/
August 31: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/08/31/in-praise-of-impotence-2/
September 1: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/09/01/2529/
September 2: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/09/02/the-regicide-regatta/
September 3: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/09/03/quite-original-sin/
Qadaffi did have a giant arm statue with the fist crushing a US fighter plane. I think that trumps Saddam’s casts of his fists. Even King Kong would have been proud. However, the Journal of Record may have an inferiority complex when it comes to such displays. It did follow the usual corporate strategy of building a new extravagant HQ just before going into a spiraling decline, but it never matched the sheer imperialistic exuberance of your fair city when Colonel McCormick instructed his reporters to abscond with souvenirs of all the world’s landmark to stick into the outer wall of the Tribune Building.
Thank you, loyal reader if dubious aesthete.
Have you forgotten all those public statues of Saddam? I was particularly impressed with the representations of him as Saladin and, if I remember correctly, Douglas Fairbanks in “The Thief of Baghdad” and Peter O’Toole in both “Lawrence of Arabia” and “What’s New, Pussycat?”
Eugene
Cindy Starks posted this comment:
Everybody’s a critic. Moammar tried to get Martha Stewart to stop by, but she said she didn’t plan to be in the neighborhood.
Thanks Cindy.
Now I am having images of Martha Stewart advising Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia”. Lead the Arab Revolt in style with the Martha Stewart Camel Saddle Collection!
Eugene