The Frinklin and Fred Show

China Rocks!

Hu Jintao, President of China has been in Seattle the past couple days. He toured a Boeing plant in Everett (where the title quote and this oddly-disconcerting photo came from), he met with various luminaries at a dinner reception at Bill Gates’ house, he flashed a surprising sense of humor -at one point joking with our Governor that he would find hotel rooms for all 6 million Washington residents for the 2008 Olympics.

I should be commenting on the odd, multi-tiered relationship we have with China: rival, business partner, debt-holder . Or I could mention the various human rights violations that China is accused -and almost certainly guilty - of. But I won’t.

I’m going to bitch about how much this screwed up my week. President Jintao stayed at a hotel on 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle. My office is on 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle. You can imagine the motorcade and security-based fun this entailed. Even more fun, on Monday I went out to lunch and stumbled on to a protest by the Falun Gong. This isn’t anything unexpected. Century Square is where everybody protests. I was impressed by the organization and focus though. Most protests, especially the anti-war ones, usually degenerate into pointless grandstanding and bile-spewing pretty quickly.

Or performance art. That’s much worse.