The Mome Rath

All the important pundits and commentators are reporting from Davos this week. I am sure my own readers are anxious to have my report (speaking of common 'taters).

While walking around town or the corridors of the Hotel Belvedere, you check every face to figure out if it is someone important. While doing this, one should maintain a serious demeanor, and occasionally talk into your cell phone. This is so people will look at you to figure out if you are someone important.

Full disclosure requires me to say that the only people I talked to beyond "how do you do?" were people I already knew. From this you may deduce that none of them has ever had a platinum recording, dated Brad Pitt, or been impeached. Also, I was there for the trade discussions, which took place in the morning, and I then had to leave. People in the preceding categories are not ambulatory in the morning. Anyhow, I was not a panel member, I was seated in the audience. In fact, from what I saw on television that evening, George Soros was sitting in more or less the same chair for the afternoon session.

Anyhow, the trade panel discussion did have its moments of frisson: Ambassador Portman threw down the guantlet to the Swiss to approve the Free Trade Agreement, and to the EU to come to an agreement on agriculture for the Doha round. But you saw all that on television.

During the reception afterwards, I was able to discuss briefly the anti-Americanism of the European press with a State Department representative. We did not have time to get into the anti-Americanism of the State Department personnel.