Although I am as tempted as anyone to focus my time and energy on the recent sex scandals of Republicans, let me remind you all that as we bow to the temptation to obsess over Governor Sanford, the language coming out of North Korea is genuinely frightening. We need to be paying attention to what is important, not what is, in the words of Joan Didion, political pornography.
Fifteen years ago I taught a course in political psychology and had students profile a world leader. One of my best students did Kim Jong-Il, the son of the founder of the PRK, Kim Il-Sung (who, by the way, died fifteen years ago, but serves as "Eternal President"). Even in 1995, there were clear indications that Kim Il-Jong was insane, possibly from the long-term effects of syphilis. His actions defy rationality when using common sense standards. North Korea's threat to bring a "shower" of nuclear weapons in a military confrontation is--far and away--a more important news story than anything Mark Sanford could do, say or write.
Now is the time for all of us to engage in "grown-up politics" and ignore the trivial to focus on the dire. Fortunately, I do think that most of the people in Washington who do the important work (and, since the media have stopped covering those who work for those who entertain, this work goes unnoticed) are not neglecting the important tasks, but there is a danger that politicians will be forced to divert their time to meaningless things, to the detriment of the nation.
If we wish to learn from history, we need only look to the mess in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, when Bob Dole visited the White House after returning from a trip to negotiate a peace and Clinton spent the whole visit asking Dole about his impending Senate trial for lying about his sexual misconduct. One could make the argument that thousands of people (yes, non-Americans count as people) died because Clinton was distracted from the crisis.
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