[NYC-L] look what this guy has to say about us

[Dea2608 at aol.com]

FRAME / UNFRAME
 
 
  6/30/98
G.D. Gearino: Albanians are true Americans 
 

Archive  
 
     If any of the missing Albanians are reading this newspaper, I have a 
message for them: Bless you, boys. I hope we never find you. 
     As you may remember from recent reports, the missing Albanians are 
military cadets who arrived in the United States a while back to participate 
in a NATO-sponsored exercise, then disappeared. One minute they're marching 
around Camp Lejeune with soldiers from 13 other countries, and the next 
minute they're scarcer than a radical feminist at a Southern Baptist 
conference on domestic relations. 
     By the time Marine Corps officials finished counting heads, 14 of the 40 
Albanians who had participated in the training exercise were gone. 
     This should make you feel proud and lucky. 
     The Albanians ran away, of course, because they didn't want to go home. 
Albania is a chronically poor country with a long history of religious 
oppression, political turmoil and economic chaos. It once was so hard-line 
communist that it broke off relations with China in the late 1970s because 
that country had lost its ideological edge and begun consorting with 
capitalists. Even after abandoning communism and embracing capitalism 
themselves, the Albanians made a hash of it. They put their money into 
patently fraudulent, get-rich-quick investment pyramids, then started a civil 
war when they discovered their money was gone. 
     In short, Albania is a good place to get away from. And the United 
States is a good place to get away to. 
     We forget this sometimes. Americans complain ceaselessly about almost 
everything -- taxes, traffic, cable TV service, politicians, telemarketers, 
the weather, slow drivers, the neighbor's leaf-blower, the dog on the Taco 
Bell commercials, whatever. I even know a guy who gripes because the stock 
market is only generating a 14 percent return on his investments these days. 
(That's me, by the way.) 
     Well, you know what? All that looks pretty good to the average Albanian. 
     Sadly, 11 of the 14 already have been rounded up. Five of them were 
caught as they walked along the highway; three were arrested in a Kinston bus 
station, and the rest of them were run to earth in Philadelphia. That means 
only three are still at large. 
     I hope we never see them again. 
     I hope they burrow in a big city somewhere and find jobs, even if it's 
something we'd consider low-wage drudge work but would seem like a gold mine 
to them. I hope they meet nice American women who look like the Spice Girls 
and teach them some killer dance steps. I hope somebody takes them to a 
big-league baseball game so the other spectators can be treated to the 
sublime joy of hearing umpires heckled in a thick Albanian accent. I hope 
they live long, fruitful, happy, American-style lives. 
     I hope all this happens because they've earned it. By walking off into 
the night of a strange country with little more than hope, they reminded us 
of something: Much of the rest of the world desperately wants what we've got. 
     After all, I don't know anybody trying to disappear into the Albanian 
countryside. 
     

G.D. Gearino can be reached at dang at nando.com or 829-4802