It is after all the title of one of Henry James' novels (one of my favorite books by this author). They also made a rather intimate movie out of the book. But tonight I wonder what would James do (or think or even more write) if he had had access to the same piece of news I read over the last couple of days.
What, indeed, can we think when politicians (European technocrats) spend their time, the taxpayers' money (who finances their comfortable tax-free salaries), and their credibility squabbling over the right diameter of a tomato, the perfect shape of a cucumber or the curbature of a banana? Don't they have more important subjects to discuss? Isn't there a global economical meltdown out there? Aren't there countries in which people are starving, lacking water, dying of AIDS, of war? What, in the name of SANITY, makes it THAT IMPORTANT and RELEVANT to the average fruit and vegetable buyer what shape is a cherry, what size is a peach, what diameter is a cauliflower?Are they bowing to the pressure of an agro-industrial complex? Are these the demands of a new agricultural lobby?
I can hear sentences such as "My tomato is better than your tomato" ring in my ears and brain. I do not know whether I should laugh because the absurdity of such a sentence sounds very much like Mr. and Mrs. Martin's dialogue in Ionesco's La Cantatrice Chauve at the best, or like a Louis de Funes' retort, or straight out of a foreign language method (as in "My tailor is rich" kind of sentence) at the worst; or if I should cry that highly educated gentlemen and women, most of them (if not all of them) elected to their highly remunerated positions, can within one decade dictate the shape, weight and general appearance of fruits and vegetables and then change it.
Why are they even allowed to regulate Nature?
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