title: Simpson's World: Dispatches from the Front Lines
author:  John Simpson 
description: In this engaging memoir, BBC television correspondent Simpson goes everywhere and sees it all. He's on hand for the Iranian Revolution, the siege of Sarajevo and the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance. He interviews Gadhafi, Khomeini and Castro. He gets punched by British Prime Minister Harold Wilson ("he had a good left hook") and former UN Secretary-General/alleged Nazi war-criminal Kurt Waldheim ("I did not rate him as a puncher") for asking questions, and stands by nervously while a young Osama bin Laden offers the Afghan mujaheddin Simpson is filming five hundred dollars to shoot him. Simpson sniffs at the tabloid press and American news in general, but his book shares the typical weaknesses and strengths of television journalism. He sees mainly what's in front of the camera, and his take on world affairs tends to the impressionistic and superficial. His assessments of public figures sometimes wallow in bathos, as in an elegy to Princess Di that muses on "how empty the lives of people like me who didn't really know her were going to seem." But he has an eye for telling details and a knack for drawing vivid thumbnail sketches and you-are-there atmospherics, rendered with an impressive degree of literary polish. In the best sections, his profiles of unsung heroes, victims and ambiguous villains-a courageous Peruvian mayor battling a corrupt local army commander, a widow who stoops to desperate measures to get her children out of Sarajevo and the UN official who exploits and saves her-make the tragedies of history come alive. <br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: [Back](0671319728__41.htm) | [Next](0671319728__43.htm)  
  [Contents](0671319728_toc.htm)
  
  # **Chapter 42**
  
  Mike started his speech by going straight to the point.
  
  "There's only one issue in this campaign. Forget all the blather about at-
  large election. And why is Simpson so worked up about what he calls the
  'principle' of residential election, anyway? Back in the old days, what with
  his globe-trotting and his villa in Spain and his penthouse in London, I'm
  sure he never cast anything _except_ absentee ballots."
  
  The large crowd in the Gardens laughed. Mike waved his hand, as if brushing
  aside an insect.
  
  "But that's all a red herring. The only thing Simpson _really_ cares about is
  the same thing I care aboutthe franchise." Again, he made that brushing
  motion with his hand. "Oh, sure, there's other stuff. Lots of it. Our refugee
  policy, our economic policy, our foreign policyyou name it, and Simpson and I
  are on opposite ends. But all that's for later. _This_ election is for
  delega