From Foreign Policy's Passport blog:
In his classic essay Shooting an Elephant, George
Orwell describes an experience he had as a colonial police officer in
Burma. Under public pressure from a crowd of townspeople, he puts down
an out-of-control elephant against his own wishes, describing it as the
moment "first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's
dominion in the East." As the people of the town debate the merits and
legality of his actions, he wonders "whether any of the others grasped
that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool."
It's tempting to wonder if any similarly penetrating insights or
self-reflections have come to Spanish King Juan Carlos as he lies in the
hospital, having injured his hip on an elephant shooting trip in Botswana that has ignited a firestorm of controversy.
In addition to being about the least politically correct way to spend
your vacation (was the baby seal-clubbing junket all booked up?) the
optics of this were pretty terrible at a time when more than half of
young Spaniards are out of work and Spanish banks are facing yet another downgrade. Plus, it turns out that the King -- who is Spain's official head of state -- didn't inform the government that he was leaving the country and might have used public funds in the process....MORE
We last visited His Majesty in 2008's "
I'll hug King Juan Carlos I but I won't shut up, says Chávez".
