US Media Ignore Ruble Exchange Rate Either Because Americans Don’t Care or Because They’re all Russophobes, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 23 – Russians note that there is a big difference between American and Russian media. Russian media devote enormous daily attention to the ruble-dollar exchange rate while American media almost never report about it. Either Americans don’t care, Russians say, or they are all infected with Russophobia.

            That is just one of the anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova includes in her latest collection (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/47586/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Signing petitions for Nadezhdin’s presidential candidacy is today the only legal way to protest the Putin regine. It’s regrettable that it is useless.

·       The defense ministry has decided to equate signatures on Nadezhdin’s petition to signatures on forms committing the individual to professional military service.

·       When Putin and other Russian leaders disagree about something, the only appropriate response is to believe none of them.

·       Russians increasingly recall the bad old days before Putin: 22 rubles would buy a dollar, seven rubles would buy a liter of gas, people could retire at 55 or 60, and the state built hospitals rather than churches. It is a wonder that anyone survived.

·       The main rule of Russian life is that without money, no one can or will do anything but with money, exactly the same outcome will occur. Everyone simply needs to recognize this and go to sleep.

·       Democracy, it is said, is in crisis; but it has always been in crisis because that is how it develops. Tyranny on the other hand is a system where everything is always better than ever until it collapses completely.