the wheel chair and you

a long poor georgie's almanack

Look on the Bright Side, the Bright Side of Life ... A Monty Python moment

Today, i had the "luxury" of leisurely surfing the web while in bed with what is scientifically known as a low grade "crud." The AP reported on a recently-found eight-second film of Pres. FDR being pushed in a wheelchair. He and the press cooperated to hide the results of FDR's debilitating bout with polio in that long ago age.

Fast forward to the late 20th Century. A wheel chair bound client and I flew up to NYC to visit with the Saudi Ambassador to the UN and later with the UN Secretary General. We were seeking support for an annual award to heads-of-state who advanced the cause of disability rights.

I wanted a photo of the ambassador and my client holding a copy of the historic picture below to help seal a deal. We snapped the photo but didn't get the money. The 1945 meeting off the Saudi coast between FDR and King Ibn Saud, however, was hugely successful.  Its outcome dramatically changed American history, your life and mine.

Background:
FDR was frail and ill. WWII was winding down. He was returning from the unfortunate Yalta meeting with Churchill and Stalin that set the stage for the decades-long Cold War.The president was looking ahead to a future in which the US needed oil ... a lot of it. Yes, there were other issues involved, like a homeland for the Jews, against which Ibn Saud was adamant.

The King had never met a leader of FDR's stature, or been on a war ship. He was old, severely crippled with arthritis and fascinated by the President's wheelchair, something he had never seen. FDR gave Saud the spare "chair" stowed on the ship for the journey.

Clearly, the gesture of recognizing Ibn Saud as a peer, even though he was firmly rooted in the Dark Ages, and the wheel chair gift, were among the major reasons the US kept the unique rights to explore and pump cheap Saudi oil.  The Brits, for instance, were equally anxious to obtain a concession for the liquid gold.

The Bright Side is that cheap oil played a huge role in America's stupendous growth after WWII.

The Dark Side is our continual entanglement with oil producing countries and its stupendous costs.