The ultimate ironic facade?

Often while lane-splitting through the gridlock, which is slightly intensified at the moment due to Gold Coast road closures, certain thoughts will cross my mind (which is, uh, why I have a blog). Today seemed to be the busiest yet, although the traffic did dissipate very slightly after the Isle of Capri turn-off. The irony of literally thousands of cars being stuck in gridlock, going nowhere, all in the aid of some of the fastest cars in the world in Sunday's Indy Car race.

The facade is that the international viewers (I suspect there will be a few million of them) will only see the images from Surfers on Sunday. They'll see shots of the very very fast cars, and perhaps a few long shots of the South Pacific in the background. In short, they'll see a facade of the Gold Coast, that differs from the reality that so many of the commuters were experiencing this afternoon.

Interestingly, in the days before I deliberately avoided watching what passes for news in this country, I remember seeing so many similar accusations levelled at countries whose foreign policy differed to what our leaders (who weren't even there) thought was best. How often have we heard the expression "there was the (name the country) that was shown to the cameras, then there was the (name the country) that we saw after they took our cameras off us" (yes it was often sycophantic journalists saying this).

Funnily enough, I hadn't thought about that for years, but something in today's commute brought it right back into my mind. I wonder how many of the international viewers will see the "real" Gold Coast this weekend? Will they even think about it? Still, as I related yesterday, my vehicle has no engine and only two wheels -- so I don't seem to suffer from "indy fever". If anything, my commute times have actually improved slightly this week.

Who would have thought it?