--- layout: post author: Pascal Cuoq date: 2012-05-11 23:22 +0200 categories: rant format: xhtml title: "Life stole my joke—and all I got is this lousy blog post" summary: --- {% raw %}

On a recent occasion to visit the USA on a professional basis, I nearly declined. I had a lengthy explanation ready for my refusal, and it might even have become a rant-tagged blog post. I finally went, so that hypothetical blog post never became. Today, I feel I have been cheated: a really good bit of my explanation would, if I were to re-use it now in another rant, appear unimaginative; stale, even.

See, my explanation of why I didn't want to be a visitor in the USA included a passage on how schools everywhere in the world, at all levels, have bullies, but only in the US these get elected president. (You had to see it in context. There were tie-ins with culture and international politics. It was a beautiful rant)

The reason this bit is suddenly worthless is of course the latest mini-scandal in US election debates. Here is the article through which I first heard of it. My rant was about another person who may or may not have been US president at some point in eir political career.

It is not my place to comment on foreign presidentiables. The following comments are intended only in the abstract.

If told that this post is too off-topic for this blog I plan to use the “but the link to the original article came from my colleague Eric Eide” defense. That and something on the general topic of conference attendance and testicle massages.

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