There’s a new show on CNN called GPS for “Global Public Square” and despite the dumb name the show, hosted by Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, is brilliant – exactly the kind of dialog Americans need to hear as we face the complex challenges of the coming years.
NOTE: This is NOT a blog by Mr. Zakaria: Go HERE For official CNN show site: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.zakaria.gps/
Frankly I’ll be surprised if the show can last for long – the Larry King demographic is not going to tune this in, even if they jazz things up as Anderson Cooper has effectively done with AC360 in an effort to pull in younger viewers and a more mainstream news audience. In fact the weakest part of the show was the clever but insulting “GW Bush as idiot” sketch to close, effectively undermining the show’s (correct) contention that it’s going to bring together insiders and ask them very good questions. Note to Fareed – you’re a great example of a respectful but edgy correspondent. Don’t allow others to violate the trust this inspires in your interview folks. I noted that Doug Fieth, an excellent spokesperson for the neoconservative cause, hardly spoke or was severely edited. This was unfortunate as he was the only person on the panel with complete insider knowledge of the situation in Iraq. Don’t let your guests and their *opinions* undermine interviews with people who were the architects of the still-active Iraq policies.
Zakaria is one of the best observers of the global state of affairs. He balances the open, democratic, globalized, and entrepreneurial sensibilities we enjoy in the USA with the fact that most of the rest of the world does not share those sensibilities and in many cases *does not want to share them*. This simple realization separates his views from the more common, and naive, idea that everybody wants to be … just like us.
