-
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (R) greets Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at UN headquarters in New York - Source: Reuters -
Related
Last week a plague of well-tinctured swine descended on New York City. Those models, scribes, fixers and scumbags here for Fashion Week cut down the trees at the Lincoln Centre, filled the better bars with their braying inanities ('Pink is the new blue'), and topped up two difficult-to-define qualities for which this town is reputed: Glamour and style.
But at least they didn't eat very much.
The same will not be said for the diplomats, assistants, press minders and security details who replaced them, all here for what has been - unkindly perhaps - labeled "Fashion Week for Fatties". A trifecta of diplomatic events has drawn them from 192 countries. There's the Millenium Development Goals Summit (it started yesterday), the Clinton Global Initiative (which begins today), and the UN General Assembly, or UNGA, which commences in two days time.
For the visiting diplomats, it's a wonderful opportunity to do business, on the principle that 192 meetings in New York is easier to organise than travel to 192 different locations.
For New Yorkers, it's a horror show. Traffic slows to eight miles an hour in mid-town during UNGA week. It's doubtful that even limousine and cab drivers benefit. The gridlock is so terrible that most people, i.e. those without security details, prefer to walk.
You might be forgiven for wondering aloud just what tangible benefits come from the endless round of bilaterals, and scripted handshakes. Conclusions are difficult to draw. In the past I've been assured that breakthroughs don't come easily, that consensus is important (and time-consuming), that incremental progress achieves benefits. One could equally say that a fashion show by Miucci Prada has as much effect on world poverty as the Millennium Development Goals summit. Those goals, which include halving extreme poverty, were proposed a decade ago, and by general assent have languished ever since . And now we're all broke.
What is certain is that there will the usual competition from semi or actual dictators to say the nuttiest thing. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran can usually be relied on to froth genocidally about Jewry, or the United States. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez offered some interesting flourishes on the former riff a few years ago.
Those guys make the news, and they make a mockery of the notion of free speech, a quality so vigorously suppressed in their home countries. As an observer, I've noticed that the most supine and comprehensive coverage of these leaders occurs from lands where the government is by kleptocracy. I've also observed that as the theatricality of such events rises, so too does the cynicism with which they are met.
Fashionistas, come back! All is forgiven. You are idle, empty and cruel, but you never pretend to be anything else.
World News Video
-
Dangerous rush to Everest summit (1:59)
-
Dozens killed in Syrian massacre (2:09)
-
'King of Romance' competes in Eurovision (1:46)
