Culture

When I was just out of college, one of my pals from school landed a plum job as a production assistant at ABC News. Sometimes, we would meet his pals from the ABC News room for a drink near their studios in the West 60s in Manhattan. One of them was a terrific guy named Tom Capra, son of filmmaker Frank Capra, and I vividly remember him going into a rant over a beer about Ted Turner's hare-brained new 24-hour news operation which Tom and all his colleagues referred to derisively as the "Chicken Noodle Network." 

At the time, CNN's aspirations and shenanigans and low salaries seemed beneath the serious work that was done by the likes of their Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner and the other big stars of evening news. Back then those other stars were people like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor, a mostly male group who traced their journalistic DNA back to Edward R. Murrow and that CBS operation that was kind of the Olduvai Gorge of broadcast news.

Now most of those stars are dead and oddly, the Chicken Noodle Network which rose up, revolutionized television and in fact, modern society, has in fact recently transformed itself into the Cadaver News Network. Between its non-stop coverage of Michael Jackson's demise (that was a guy who really knew how to make an exit), the 24/7 coverage of the death of Teddy Kennedy that has now (probably temporarily) usurped it and the age of most of its commentators and viewers, CNN is one of those ideas I feel as though I have seen gone through its full life cycle -- from laughing stock to parody of itself.

Candidly, it's hard to imagine the world without CNN and when global crises strike -- as most recently in the case of the Iranian uprisings -- it can roll out its really good journalists and provide the sort of coverage that revolutionized the business. But it has never really figured out in almost three decades of existence what to do the rest of the time. Some of its answers to that question, like Larry King, are both superannuated and intoxicated with sheer trivia (otherwise how do you explain the appearance of Kate Gosselin, a woman who any respectable news organization ought to treat like intellectual ebola virus, something that once in your system pretty much dooms your credibility to bleed out through every orifice?)

Part of its solution to the issue of what to do when there is no news is, of course, a sort of repetition of recycled headlines and clips that I believe will ultimately be revealed to be one of the torture techniques used by the CIA in its interrogation of detainees. But another element of it has been their pioneering of the coverage of world events ... and particularly those in Washington ... as a kind of reality television show. 

What they do is put together a cast of people who are certain to fight with one another and then they toss a story in the middle of them and watch them tear at it like hyenas with a tasty piece of wildebeest. In these sessions, the news is no longer central, it is just a catalyst to generate more intense inter-personal drama, the precise equivalent of the latest bit of Tyra Mail or Gordon Ramsay's latest challenge for his chefs on "Hell's Kitchen." It's Real World DC and we're just waiting for Bill Bennett to give it good to Donna Brazile. Of course, when they move into funereal mode the terms of the interactions are more muted but that is more than made up for by the stately soundtrack and dramatic graphics that are the shiny wrappers crying out that this is "new and improved" version of the same old story. Want more filler? Let's see what our viewers are emailing into us about us. Or let's see how the Internet is covering the same damn thing we are.

At the end of the day, it all calls to mind the Saturday Night Live bit that only slightly pre-dated my conversations with Tom Capra, the one in which Chevy Chase would periodically announce "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." I don't say this to minimize stories of real importance ... nor do I say it out of some misplaced nostalgia for "the golden age" of news. We live in the golden age of news. The way it is delivered on the web trumps everything every done before in history whether you are looking for ultra-local news on whose cat got caught in whose tree or you want 1000 perspectives on the latest election in Cameroon. 

CNN played a big role in triggering the transformation that has brought us to where we are today. But now, they as well as MSNBC and Fox seem to have lost their way. What they do best is cover breaking stories. They should recognize that stately music and somber logos do not dignity make just as fights among their contract commentators are neither newsworthy nor, for the most part, terribly interesting. They should also recognize that repeating things over and over again and having the otherwise excellent Wolf Blitzer say, as he too often does, that something is "historic" does not actually make an event bigger than it is. It only makes their already dragged-out coverage longer. There must be a better way ... more focused on hard news coverage and taut analysis. There has got to be a programming choice other than that between dead air and dead people.

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America has been suffering an outbreak of especially virulent and acute stupidity recently. It has been particularly manifest at town hall meetings devoted to "discussions" of health care reform in which incensed Republicans scream at the top of their lungs about provisions that are not actually in any of the legislation under consideration -- for example the so-called "death panels" that would have bureaucrats deciding when to pull the plug on "grandma" (as President Obama characterized it yesterday). 

Scientists are, of course, fascinated by this phenomenon which, given the behavior in question, has a better claim on the term swine flu than the current influenza flavor of choice does. Does it represent something new in the long history of stupidity? Or is it merely the latest manifestation of a time-honored component of the political process -- the cries for help of one of America's most important minority groups: idiots? (At least I hope it is a minority. There is some debate about that. It calls to mind Gore Vidal's famous line when asked about what he felt about studies that showed that only half of Americans read newspapers and only half vote and he said, something to the effect that at least he hoped it was the same half.)

Now, frankly, I don't know what the idiots have to complain about. This country has done more for them than perhaps any other single segment of our society. The constitution is packed with protections for the stupid. Grade inflation was designed especially to make them feel good about themselves. Self-help sections in bookstores and most daytime television talk shows are focused around the idea that morons are entitled to the same self-esteem that is enjoyed by people who actually think before they speak and act. In fact, catering to the nit-wit market has built the American entertainment industry into the world serving behemoth it is today (there are dummies everywhere, in fact globalization threatens a shift in the global balance of stupidity that may give an edge to more populous nations although China and India do have cultural inhibitions against some root causes of American assininity. They for example, as societies, seem to value education more and respect for those members of society that have somewhat more experience.)

Religious idiots are given the right to insert made up fairy tales for which is there is not nor could there be one single scintilla of evidence into "science" books as if they really happened. They demand and are actually accorded respect for ideas that are so preposterous that they wouldn't make it into the cosmology of Sponge Bob Square Pants. Conspiracy idiots have created an industry out of the idea that weather balloons are alien spacecraft and that those of us who are Jewish, who have been getting our asses kicked for all of human history, are actually in control of global affairs. Special-interest idiots are given the right to plead the case that if their children fail at math, can't spell or speak English badly enough then rather than being taught how to correct it, tests ought to be adjusted to ignore their shortcomings or, alternatively, their linguistic "innovations" ought to simply be treated as creativity or even as new forms of language. (You wonder why the math idiots have not managed to get algebra and calculus revised or just dropped from the curriculum for similar reasons. But then again... they are idiots.)

The financial industry caters to the idiot market and depends on the idiocy of congressional overseers to enable the embrace of techniques that anyone sound of reasoning would instantly reject. Congressional idiots are allowed to stand up and say that when legislation becomes too long it shouldn't even be read. We even several years ago elected and then re-elected an idiot president of the United States.

Last week, I spent a couple days -- after a beautiful trip of whitewater rafting in Colorado and hiking through the amazing Utah desert -- in the idiot capital of America: Las Vegas, Nevada. While many decry Las Vegas as a fleshpot, a blight on civilization or just the tackiest place on the planet Earth, first and foremost it is the Capistrano of idiots, the place to which nature draws them all (or at least the ones who could not get full-time work in Washington or Hollywood). You can tell because even at the airport, they have games of chance that guarantee that whoever plays them will lose their money... and long lines of people waiting to play. And the airport is just the tip of the iceberg of an entire industry built on the notion that people can't count or won't, that they believe in magical outcomes (see earlier offensive religious reference) or are just too damn dumb to breathe.

The city offers shows that cater to idiot tastes (how else can one explain the long and flourishing career of Carrot Top or the fact that every other person in town seems to have a tattoo that they are certain to regret in a matter of months if not minutes?). The city even seems to think that if it doesn't build windows into casinos that the idiots will lose track of the time and stay in them forever (much as horses will reputedly continue to eat until their stomachs explode or as right wing conservatives will continue incessantly to hammer the policies of the '80s regardless of how outdated or discredited they have become).

In fact, it is telling that Las Vegas is so dependent on stupidity that it is one of the few cities in America where alcohol (read: stupid juice) is sold on every street corner and practically handed out free on casino floors. There is really nothing that gives you a clearer picture of what the city and much of America is about than watching a cluster of bloated conventioneers, recent excess testing the very limits of their pants' sans-a-belt technology, weaving down the sidewalk along Las Vegas Boulevard while sucking on the twisting plastic straws in their two foot tall day-glo margherita containers. 

This past weekend, despite the recession, Las Vegas was choked with people mouth-breathing their way from all-you-can-eat buffets to one opportunity after another to fritter away their kids college funds. Which just goes to show: There really is one recession proof market in the United States, a market that flourishes in good times and bad, and one that canny politicos everywhere are depending on as the last line of defense against common sense and the big fixes America urgently needs in health care, energy, climate and fiscal policy. Powerful people in America have come to depend on our idiots precisely because they know that when it comes to stupidity, they will never let us down.

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Washington is a city of oxymorons. It is a city of garden variety morons, as well. On the oxymoron side we have old favorites like "military intelligence," "compassionate conservative," and "government organization." On the moron side...well, in U.S. politics we have morons on both sides. 

Now we have something new however, as in Washington the oxymorons and the morons are coming together in the form of America's latest reality television extravaganza (we really needed another): "Real World Washington." This is a unique double oxymoron in that it calls itself real but, like most reality TV, it is not...and because it is suggesting, fancifully, that there is somehow a connection between Washington and the real world. As for the morons, well you need only visit the bars around the DuPont Circle neighborhood location of the Real World set and you can view for yourself the cast in all their beer-soaked glory.

At first I wondered to myself how it was that a show like "The Real World" could have become MTV's longest-running hit, now in its 17th year. After all, it's pretty formulaic. Semi-attractive young adults including at least one or two with deep psychological problems are put together in a house in which they: drink, puke, appear to grope one another in grainy night-vision camera shots, and then fight about who groped whom.

Of course, thinking of it that way, I naturally started to wonder why it took so long for the show to come to the home of American politics which have been featuring all these activities for years. (For those of you who are more insensitive than I, insert Teddy Kennedy joke here. And for those of you who don't have the stomach for such humor but still want a laugh at the expense of all that Kennedy family groping, see this link about a new book on America's zany royal family.)

Once I started thinking about politicians and groping and the real world, however, my thoughts immediately drifted eastward, out over the Atlantic, and in the direction of the world's most famous aging libido, that of the host of this week's G8 Meeting, Silvio Berlusconi. This in turn led to a thunderbolt of inspiration akin to that which struck another famous Italian in the Berlusconi mold, Michael Corleone, when he first saw the ill-fated Apollonia Vitelli. What about the Real World Berlusconi-style? What about Real World L'Aquila? Once we get the G8 leaders to Italy, why don't we lock them in a room until they actually produce something productive? And let's put it all on video! Big Brother for Big Brother! 

And to keep it interesting we can add elements of other reality shows. For example, how about a taste of Real Housewives Berlusconi-style, while we're at it. Just locking Silvio and his really (justifiably) angry, estranged wife Veronica Lario in a house for the enjoyment of tv audiences everywhere would be irresistible.But throw her in with a bunch of other world leaders? See what happens when Silvio shoots an ill-considered glance in the direction of Michelle Obama? Who's wailing on him first? Veronica, Barack or Michelle? (My money is on Michelle.) Sadly, of course, Veronica is passing on the G8 Summit, forcing the Italians to turn the wife of their president to be the hostess for the affair.

We still have plenty of fun cast to choose from, however, given that the meetings in Italy will actually be attended by more than 25 countries, including all the G20. Just think of the potential gang we could feature in the house that meet the Real World formula for diversity and mayhem. 

• Of course, we start with the hard-partying Berlusconi. He may be 72 but he has the judgment and appetites of a 19-year-old frat boy and is certain to end up in the money shots that MTV needs. For example, see the recently released photos of him enjoying two women locked in a girl-on-girl kiss in front of him at a party at his estate in Sardinia. 

• Barack and Michelle Obama add the diversity element. In fact, this week they will actually break the color line at the G8 Summit, making it the first to actually feature a person of color sitting in one of the principal's seats. But they are also fun-loving, party people. Barack danced on the Ellen show and in Dreams from My Father he admitted to the kind of recreational drug use that one has to believe is an off-camera Real World specialty. Michelle would, of course, be the serious one in the house, the good girl who MTV clings to as a sign of the redeeming social content of the series.

• Carla Bruni knows how to party like a rock star from having partied with so many rock stars and because she is so telegenic she will be allowed to bring along her little guy, who will undoubtedly end up being the "Spencer" (to mix reality TV metaphors) of the show, mouthing off to everyone and likely getting into a fight with some of the bigger, more athletic members of Real World L'Aquila.

• One of the more dangerous of "jock" contingent will be former member of the Japanese Olympic team, Taro Aso, who competed in the shooting competition. Perfect for TV, Aso is even more dangerous when shooting off his mouth than when using a weapon. For instance, there was the time that he said sketched out his vision for a better Japan, suggesting that he wanted to help make it a country in which "rich Jews" would like to live.

• Another of the "jocks" with a professed love of weightlifting early in his life is Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. More appealing however to producers at MTV will be his tastes in music which include Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. So, two birds with one stone...he's the muscle (he still swims a mile twice a day) and the requisite head-banger of the crowd. (Perhaps this will create fireworks others in the group who were firebrands in their youth, like former secretary for Agitprop of her chapter of the Free German Youth socialist youth group, Angela Merkel. Maybe after a few beers with vodka chasers they might break out in a Karaoke performance of "99 Luftballons" or, from the Deep Purple songbook, "Smoke on the Water.")

• Sadly, this being television, some thought may have to be given to kicking Canada and Great Britain out of the G8 due to the fact that Stephen Harper and Gordon Brown are so boring. At least, there is nothing in their youths that suggests they would ever indulge in the kind of hijinks that make for good reality television. Harper and Canada even managed to take the drama out of the global financial meltdown by actually properly managing their financial systems (something that can't be said for Brown who manages to achieve a paradoxical blend of boring and yet somehow terrifying at the same time.)

Given the fact that Berlusconi will be joined in Italy by members of the G20, the cast can be expanded to included a diverse enough group of lively characters to make this one version of Real World actually look a lot more like the real world than its many predecessors. South Africa's Jacob Zuma is, for example, a party all by himself with four wives, three other fiancés, perhaps as many as 18 children, and a list of run-ins with the law that would allow him to play the bad boy role. China's Hu Jintao was reportedly fond of singing and dancing in his teen years and therefore might add a little lift to those party nights out. And although Brazil's President Lula and Zuma may only have achieved the fourth and fifth grade in school, respectively, this actually makes them educationally over-qualified by Real World standards. 

Sadly for the Real World premise...and for the real world...not many of the visiting leaders are women so we will have to rely on host Berlusconi to add a few of his close personal friends to add a little sexual tension to the show.  But what with party credentials of the crowd gathering in L'Aquila and the help of Il Cavaliere it's clear this could make for fine viewing.  If we wanted to make it something more than that...and something more than the bland communiqué machine G8 meetings typically are...we could add a different reality show twist, à la say "Big Brother" or "Survivor," in which participants are voted out after each week. Except in this instance, what we could do is rely on the general odiousness of hanging out with pols around the clock to motivate the cast to want to leave the house, but then not let them out unless they actually get something done in their negotiations. Think how that system would change the nature of summits. Although my fear is that rather than producing more productive meetings of government leaders, the requirement that they get something done would actually lead to the end of summits altogether.

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Millions of you turn to this blog site every day because you feel I will offer you insights that will help you make sense of the world. I know this. It's a humbling responsibility. And frankly, the enormity of it forces me to offer a confession. Today I reviewed the morning papers as I usually do (online, sans paper) and watched the early broadcasts of TV news organizations and I have got to admit it, I find everything pretty confusing. 

For instance:

• The Michael Jackson memorial service will cost the City of Los Angeles $4 million. That's their official estimate. I would bet you my copy of the "Thriller" album that the costs are considerably higher and they can't bear to admit it. Why? Well, because California is broke, right? So here we have a government that is strapped for cash forking out for the public funeral of a multi-millionaire...an event that is likely to sell hundreds of thousands of records the profits of which go straight to Jackson's family.

• On top of this, isn't this the same local government that spent hundreds of thousands trying to prosecute today's hero for child molestation? Whose case was made more difficult because today's hero paid millions to buy the silence of children with whom he had some sort of interaction...one that was worth millions to keep covered up?

• Also baffling: in a bizarre twist on a bizarre case, in order to defray the costs of memorial, the NAACP is, according to MSNBC, trying to raise funds from their members and supporters. Am I getting this right? The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is pulling out the stops to raise money for an individual who actually spent a small fortune testing the boundaries of medical science in order to actually cease being a person of color?

• And, back to California being broke, yesterday its credit rating dropped to two notches above junk status. This is an economy that were it that of a country would rank 8th in the world. This is a failing government that controls an economy larger than that of Russia, India, or Brazil. (Not to mention, Canada, Mexico or Italy.) And yet here in Washington, I get no sense of urgency on this. We do company bailouts. What's our policy going to be on state and city bailouts?

• Meanwhile, while the media's attention is focused on the Staple Center in Los Angeles, the President of the United States is meeting with the prime minister of the world's only other nuclear superpower. This story is less important than the media canonization of the guy who actually invented the concept of celebutard (someone famous primarily for doing really stupid things) and whose greatest accomplishments consisted of making high-pitched noises come out of his food hole. Want to get a sense of what it must have been like to be in the room with Vladimir and Barack? Take a look at the video of them settling in before the cameras for their joint statement this morning. Yikes. Calling all body language experts. There was none of that George W. Bush staring deep into each other's eyes you can rest assured about that.

• At the same time, roughly the same number of protestors was likely killed in Western China as in Iran a couple weeks ago, and the global outrage-o-meter is barely stirring. Apparently Muslims killing Muslims is worse than Muslims and Han Chinese killing each other which proves what? The media believes in the multiplicative power of Muslims in weighing the value of a story? Or could it be that China is too big and important to too many people to be called out on its abuses? When will we realize that we can't actually have a strong relationship with a country and a spineless one at the same time? For the United States, for example, our shared interests with China and the strengths of the relationship need to be strong enough to endure the airing of our differences or they are meaningless and the relationship will ultimately be doomed by the tensions that are not aired.

• Meanwhile, sitting in his gilded Vatican palace, the Pope has issued an encyclical striking out against greed. The encyclical, while assailing the ethical lapses that caused the current global economic meltdown, makes no mention of hypocrisy however. This might be seen as a lapse given the Church's financial record over the years, including but not limited to the failure of Banco Ambrosiano, a bank it owned. (Although one has to wonder if they had access to a higher power that guided the Vatican treasury away from investing in derivatives, which they reportedly eschewed.) Interestingly, the encyclical also warned against the perils of mismanaged globalization...an interesting switch since arguably the Catholic Church was the world's most important early force for globalization, a fact which largely triggered the reformation. (Well, the globalization thing and the financial excesses and ethical abuses of senior church officials.) And, confusingly enough, noting all these ironies and twists, the message of the Pope's encyclical about better ethics and distribution of wealth seemed timely and useful.

• Similarly confusing to me was the fact that in the wake of the United Nations latest impotent, paper condemnation of North Korean missile tests that one could not hear a wave of laughter rippling around the world. But then again, perhaps everyone was too busy figuring out which of the 16 television networks that were scheduled to be carrying the Jackson memorial they would be watching. Fortunately for us all, the Security Council, according to an AP report quoting its current president Ugandan Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda, "will continue to closely monitor the situation and is committed to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution." What a relief. 

• Finally, while all the above surprises me, one last thing that I find a bit bewildering is the number of things that are utterly unsurprising that pass for news. Just to take a couple of utterly predictable examples from today's Washington Post, "Post-Bankruptcy GM Will Have Work Cut Out for It," "Pottermania Grips London for World Premiere" and any story that discusses the arrest of former DC Mayor Marion Barry.

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Developing further my Airport Theory of Foreign Relations, it is impossible not to marvel at the creativity and industry of the Indians. Arriving after an eight-and-one half-hour-long flight from that shopping mall from Hell also known as Heathrow Terminal Five, we raced into Mumbai for a meeting. Naturally, we were seething with hostility after bad treatment and flying here on what seemed to be the original Boeing 777. In fact, parts seemed to be made from balsa wood suggesting they had been salvaged from earlier aircraft... a de Havilland Jenny for example. 

At any rate, this is the kind of subtle undermining of international relations that our painfully inefficient and unpleasant system of connecting the globe produces. We were ready to be ugly Americans, well-prepared for the job both by circumstances and genetics. 

So, what is rapidly expanding India -- today's papers announced that the country expects to grow in this global economic annus horibilis at the breathtaking rate of 7 percent -- to do with visitors like us? Answer: build in a cool-down period (no mean feat when the temperature is over 90 and everyone is nervously awaiting the arrival of the monsoon season). Where? The highway from the airport. A trip that should take 40 minutes took almost two hours. It was an exceptionally effective buffer. By the time we got to the hotel I could barely muster a sneer at the reception lady when she told me my room wasn't ready. Of course, I'll admit I was subdued somewhat by the sight of the gutted remnants of the terrorist gutted Oberoi which we passed on the way in. (And also by the security we had to pass through just to enter the lobby of this hotel.)

Admittedly, thanks to a tube strike, the city from which we came, London, is also offering massive traffic jams from the airport. The problem is they are also offering massive traffic jams to the airport. And they don't have anything like 7 percent growth to explain the rapidly growing number of cars on the motorways. Nor, of course, do they have anything like the slums that line the route into downtown Mumbai...but I'll admit it, despite the gut-wrenching deprivation in which the slum-dwellers live, it is hard to not to look around at cranes on the horizon or the ubiquity of cell phones (a phone line for life costs $2) or to think of the recent successful elections in this complex country of a billion and not think that India has the wind at its back at the moment. That doesn't minimize the social challenges but it clearly gives a feeling of vitality and hope.

What a relief to be seeing the stories of Manmohan Singh's new government on the front page of the paper and not the stories from the front pages in my last stop noting the electoral success of the BNP, the racist, troglodyte British National Party. America elects an African American. Britain sends haters to the European Parliament. (What a relief that it is a useless organization.) Worse, the papers also noted similar recent right wing successes across Europe. For example the triumph of anti-gypsy nationalists in Hungary. Great to see Europe stepping up to meet the great challenges of our times with these creatures who have crawled out of the shallow end of the political cesspool. 

That said, I can't say that I am that heartened by the news my blackberry keeps sending me from home, either. Can it really be that America is either surprised or interested that Adam Lambert is gay? (Really? Really?!) Can a Washington Post columnist actually be praising Obama for boldly taking a stance against Holocaust deniers (what next, a bold defense of Copernicus?), even as he seems to be allowing the country of those deniers to creep its way into the nuclear club? (If you don't see the irony here, write in and I will draw you a picture.)

is actually going to help either? Chrysler's best minds left after their last merger with Daimler Benz. Fiat doesn't have one single leading international brand. Is it really credible that if one of the world's most successful auto companies (Daimler Benz) couldn't save Chrysler that a combination of one of the world's most mediocre (Fiat) and a bunch of government guys who don't know anything about cars plus some union members who helped screw things up in the first place are going to do it? 

Here in India, taxi drivers talk with palpable pride at the advent of the Tata Nano, a tiny car that is a source of great national pride. Business executives cite the ease with which they meet much higher average gasoline mileage targets than posed in the United States. I mean, I get it, this is a very poor country with a wide range of desperate needs (over 40 percent of Indians don't have access to electricity yet). But you've got to ask which way the trends are pushing us...and you also have to ask why the United States has not made a more urgent priority of dramatically strengthening relations with this country. Such a relationship could not be more central to containing the threat in Pakistan, counter-balancing China, promoting democracy and managing a whole host of global threats from climate to proliferation. To be perfectly honest, I think a lot more real and lasting (rather than symbolic and likely to be fleeting) good would be likely to come from President Obama making a trip to the land of Gandhi than his recent trip to the land of Mubarak and Nasser.

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When I was a boy, in between family readings of von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and the secret diaries of Scipio Africanus, sometimes I would sneak up to my room and read a comic book.  Needless to say, DC Comics were heavily preferred over Marvel or other inferior brands because I liked my super heroes dry and undiluted by irony or wit. (Much as I like my blogs.) Particular favorites were the Legion of Super- Heroes and Justice League of America and when my brother and I would act out the events of the comics, he always wanted to be Superboy (which I considered a trite choice) or Aqualad, which I found hard to comprehend although it did lead to his spending a lot of time in the bath and being a very clean child. My favorite was Mon-El who was a mid-level African American talk show host during the day and then at night would become... Wait, I'm confused. That's someone else. This was a long time ago. No, Mon-El was cool because he appeared to have all of Superboy's powers but didn't have that annoying allergy to Kryptonite. I am telling you this because...well, because I thought he was definitely the best one and he never got anywhere nearly as much press attention as he should have.

But the real reason for bringing this all up was that also in these DC Comics stories of Superman periodically he would travel to the Bizarro world. This was a cube shaped planet where the Bizarro Code dictated "Us do opposite of all Earthly things!" Strangely all the people on the planet were rendered to appear the opposite of normal residents of earth -- like Superman -- by having them appear to be chiseled out of something relatively hard, probably soap or a good English white cheddar.   

What does this have to do with foreign policy today? Well, currently...

We have a president of France who is pro-U.S., has taken steps to have France re-join the NATO military alliance, and who has played a very active and constructive role in shaping the international response to the global economic crisis.

This same president of France has, with the chancellor of Germany, a woman, led an effort to promote a fiscally responsible response to the crisis, often admonishing the United States about its free-wheeling spending and over-aggressive market intervention.

We have the government of Sweden -- who we had been led to believe were practically so communist they were the last surviving member of the Warsaw Pact -- unhesitatingly refusing to bail out national auto icon Saab, while the ultra-capitalist U.S. sentimentally coddled the dying carcass of GM in its fiscal arms.

We have the Chinese, lectured by the entire world for gaming their currency not more than a year ago, proposing a new alternative currency and while no one is clamoring to sign up now, they are taking this idea and Chinese critiques of the U.S. economy very seriously. Because China is now the country with the cash and the U.S. is the country on the global dole.

We even have the U.S. secretary of state going to Mexico to discuss drug violence and actually acknowledging that demand in the United States is a principal driver of the problem that is currently such a corrosive force in that nation.

In the midst of this crisis, we also will soon see a G20 Summit convene in London and while it is not sure they will agree on much, the one thing they seem unified about is giving more money to the IMF...an organization that has at best a mixed record, is despised throughout the developing world and which was widely considered to be so irrelevant as recently as a year ago that there were some who thought the best answer might be to just turn out the lights and convert the whole headquarters building into condos. 

The U.S. has finally broken through a wall of prejudice and elected the first African American president, Jaguar and Land Rover are Indian car companies, Japan just beat Korea in a World Baseball Classic Championship Game from which the U.S. was shut out, and the very best basketball player in the world is Jewish.

Ok, of all these things, only the last one isn't true. We have gone through the looking glass. And as it turns out, reading those Legion of Super-Heroes comics may have been better preparation for today's world than even our lively family discussions of the Memoirs of Clive of India. Except of course, there are no super heroes anywhere to be seen and we could really use a few.

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