Final Word from Friday, September 17, 2004
Talk-show host Conan O'Brien joked that the CR is the country that explains why Franz Kafka never wrote a happy story. In fact, things weren't so bad when Kafka's major works were first being published. Thomas Bata told HN that between the world wars, the Czechs were flooding America with sneakers, the same way China is flooding America with them today. It was the Czechs that U.S. shoemakers were cursing then, he said, not the Chinese. Today, just as Conan O'Brien suggested, it's the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that's holding the Czechs back. President Jaroslav Míl of the Confederation of Industry told the BBC that if it weren't for government interference, Czech GDP could be growing at a 7-9% rate, instead of just 4%. But Bata, always the optimist, told LN that prosperity will eventually return to the CR, because Czechs are smart and hardworking. Late Night with Conan O’Brien