Boris, Must Get Moose and Squirrel!

The coverage of and reaction to Boris Yeltsin's death has been bizarre, in my opinion. The Drudge Report, which I see as a perfect media mirror to the American public's news interests, never even made it the top headline. Instead, a story about that wacky liberal Sheryl Crow saying we should only use one square of toilet paper per "visit" was the top story. All day. it was a biggie on Fox News too. But not anywhere else. What a shock. And now apparently it was a joke?

Onto Mr Yeltsin. For a country that feared the Soviet Union so much, I was surprised that this wasn't a bigger deal here. I was under the impression (rightfully so, I think, because a lot of media outlets described him this way) that Americans thought Yeltsin had a lot to do with the ending of Communism. One headline said he defended democracy from the top of a tank. Well, kind of. The attempted coup at the White House in August 1991 went a lot deeper than this, but not to most of the world, apparently.

Yeltsin was as corrupt and power-hungry as those who came before him. He had a 5% approval rating 3 months before the 1996 presidential elections and managed to win. He went to a runoff - but in the end, he won. There were all kinds of questions about his daughter Tatiana and her relationships with Russian oligarchs (business/media "tycoons") - but Boris won. He nearly died in office, depending on who you talk to - but in 1996, he won.

President Bush is not attending any of the functions surrounding Yeltsin's death. I think this is odd, and raises the question "Where is the line?" Is Bush simply not attending because he never worked with Yeltsin as his father and Bill Clinton did? Does he feel that his friendship/working relationship with Putin would be changed if he attended? What's the state of his relationship with Putin?

I guess this is what dorky kids do, but in high school (OK, freshman year of college too) we would yell out the name of a foreign leader every time we got a rebound. Much better than Joakim Noah's screams/grunts/bellows. This actually promoted knowledge of world affairs. I mean, wouldn't you go back to your dorm and Google (wait, not back then. We used the finest Internet search engine available, the great Excite.) Mahathir Mohamed? Boris Yeltsin had a permanent place as one of the first three rebounds of the game. He was that well known.

The Russian people are very divided on whether Russia improved during Yeltsin's tenure. Religion made a return, as evidenced by the nature and location of his funeral. Bootleg DVDs and CDs showed up too. Well, in greater quantities anyway. But inflation was rampant, life expectancy decreased, drug and alcohol abuse increased, and so on. The Russian space program now launches from Kazakhstan, which is sort of a bone of contention. Imagine if NASA facilities had been located in Cuba before 1957 and we still used them after that. And that Cuba had a lot of our old nuclear weapons.

It's sad that his death didn't spark more reflection on his life. No matter what negatives he brought to Russian society, he was probably the best leader they could have asked for during the time he served. And he gave us a lot of laughs, even if they were completely unintentional.