Topic: Politics
I went to a comedy gig on Friday last week with Jo Haslam, Steve Bartley, Steve Bennett, Dom Sutton and Peter Birks. I had no idea you could pay a mere tenner to see decent acts (Jeff Green and Rich Hall) test run their Edinburgh material. It's weird paying money to be a guinea pig but it was entertaining and that's all that counts. The club was packed - a clear sign that the comedy market is a healthy one. And coming in the same week that Jim Davidson declared banktuptcy, it's matured too.
Pete wrote about the gig the next day on his site and in the course of his 'review' mentioned something I'd said about the political tone of most comedy being slanted to the left. Using an example of something that Rich Hall had said I wrote back:
I did enjoy Hall's act very much. His delivery is excellent. But when for instance he says things like 'The rest of the world is looking at America in Iraq and thinking "what the fuck are you doing?", is it too much to hope for that he could mention that one reason for this is that much of the outside world was selling Saddam weapons and that they were furious at America for deposing a major creditor? Of course it is. No comedian ever approaches it from that angle. But it would make a refreshing change for me.
Someone named 'geoffchall' replied the rest of the world is 'looking at America in Iraq and thinking "what the fuck are you doing?"'and one of the reasons is that America spent so many years selling weapons to Saddam only to then have them fired back at themselves.'
It reminded me of something I'd forgotten. That many people think that the US was a major arms supplier to Iraq. It's not true. Scott Burgess of the Daily Ablution shows the real figures:
Who Armed Saddam?
For a breakdown of what the US did sell him, see the list at the bottom of this page:
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2005/06/iraq-who-armed-iraq_07.html
_ DY
at 9:16 PM BST
Updated: Tuesday, 11 July 2006 9:33 PM BST
