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about Asia Buzz
Asia Buzz: Planet Hollywood
America is the center of the universe
By TERRY McCARTHY
August
23, 2000
Web posted at 3:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 3:30 a.m. EDT
You may not have noticed this, but as a resident of NAW (the non-American World), you have ceased to exist. No matter that as you read this, you are breathing the air -- and smog -- of some Asian metropolis, being battered by a typhoon, fighting off a hangover or otherwise feeling very human. As a citizen of NAW, you are a fictive character, existing, if at all, on the outer fringes of the American imagination. You may buy Starbucks coffee, load Microsoft on your PC and watch Hollywood movies, but this doesn't make you qualify as a real person -- you are just a statistical adjustment to U.S. corporate revenue calculations. Sorry and all, but you are on a different galaxy.
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This became blindingly clear to me last week at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. One of the Democrats' top pollsters gave us an off-the-record briefing over an elaborate lunch in the Mondrian Hotel, itself the perfect glittering metaphor for America's sense of narcissistic self-absorption. The talk was of post-Convention bounces, of how to find out whether people are anti-Semitic without asking them outright, of tax cuts, the Hillary effect, education policy, white male angst.
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ASIAWEEK |
Intelligence
The story behind today's news from the editors of Asiaweek
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As a particularly decadent platter of chocolate deserts was heaved onto our table by a weightlifter that doubles as a waiter, I decided to chip in with my two cents' worth. "As someone who lives in Asia, I was wondering what role, if any, foreign policy might play in this year's campaign?" I asked, somewhat timorously. All eyes in the room turned on me, with expressions that ranged from incredulity to pity to puzzlement at why someone of such damaged intellectual ability should be allowed to wander the streets of Los Angeles, unaccompanied. "After all," I continued, trying to justify my incredibly foolish opener, "in '92 Clinton made a big deal of his China policy, even if once elected he then switched to..." But I had lost them completely.
The NAW is conversational poison in the U.S. these days. The networks avoid NAW stories unless they involve kidnapped Americans or plane crashes, preferably with celebrities on board. And politicians simply couldn't care less. George W has trouble naming foreign leaders he might have to endure on their time-consuming visits to DC, and Al knows what organized labor thinks of those sweatshops "over there."
The pollster looked at me askance, wondering for a moment if I was making a joke, then said simply, "Foreign policy? Do you hear anyone talking about it?" What could I say? I was journalistic roadkill. Gore's speech later that week polished me off -- not a single foreign policy commitment beyond a platitude about supporting world prosperity (i.e., so they can buy more American goods).
So what will it take for all of us in the NAW to get back on the U.S. agenda of important issues? A war between China and Taiwan in which a stray missile destroys the yacht of an American sailing round the world? The breaching of the Three Gorges Dam which kills 20 million Chinese and washes away the McDonalds in Yichang? The sinking of the entire Russian Pacific fleet of submarines and battleships in a perfect storm that also wipes out the northern prefectures of Japan, most of Micronesia and the Pacific atolls, and leads to jumbo surfing waves on Malibu beach?
Sorry folks, wish I could make you feel better. It's cold out here,
in the NAW. And there's only 4.8 billion of us. Some life...
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