| No one who has read Alex Haley’s monumental saga ‘Roots’ - the saga of his family’s history from his African ancestor Kunta Kinte until his own emergence generations later as a literary Black American - can forget the portraits he drew of his various ancestors; of Kinte, abducted and transported to a life of slavery in the United States, of Kinte’s daughter Kizzy, of Uncle Pompey, and perhaps the most colourful of them all, Kizzy’s son George who trained fighting gamecocks and was given the nickname ‘Chicken George’. |
| In Haley’s account, Chicken George’s hopes of becoming a freed man were dashed when his white owner Tom Lea lost a wager he could not afford and had to surrender his assets including his slave George to his British opponent, Sir C. Eric Russell. In time, Chicken George returned to the United States, became a part of Alex Haley’s chrono-genealogy and found a permanent niche in American folklore. |
| The same soubriquet could well be applied, though perhaps not for the same reasons, to another George. There are many who might feel that President George W. Bush’s behaviour at crucial moments in his presidency might merit such a description, however uncharitable it may seem to his supporters. On the fateful 11 September, when the nation looked to the White House for leadership and assurance, he remained absent from Washington DC for most of the day. More recently, when the hurricane Isabel threatened the nation’s capital on the 18th of this September, he declared a local holiday, quit the White House and repaired to Camp David to ‘deal with the storm.’ [EXTRACT] |
Published in DAWN 11 Oct. 2003, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006). |
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