Bowling, Gardens, NCAA Brackets and Parties....what's missing?

I haven't seen the overnight ratings but I am sure The ONE's appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno topped the charts. The campaigner in Chief went sans teleprompter and gaffed his way through the interview with charm, poise and complete obliviousness to the real problems facing everyday Americans.

The blogs, papers, television news and cups strung together between sixth graders houses are all buzz, or vibrating in the case of the string, with stories about how the First African American President of the United States insulted mentally and physically handicapped world wide by saying his bowling was comparable to that of a Special Olympian. Of course, as soon as he was able to get aboard Air Force One and in front of his teleprompter, Obama started making calls to apologize. I am predicting a bowl off between The ONE and this one by month's end. Frankly, I hope this story dies quickly and isn't dragged out and played out like some cancer stricken reality TV show star's demise in the British tabloids where narcissism and not melanoma is the worse illness on display.

If "blowlergate" is dominating above the fold, the below the fold real estate is being devoted to monitoring Obama's NCAA pics and Michelle's little 1,100 square foot Organic White House garden to grow taters, melons and tomatoes for the little ones.

Sure there are the requisite stories of how evil the workers of AIG are, how outraged Congress is and how the final four on American Idol have already been selected but the din of these stories is leaving little room for stories that should be front and center of page 1.

Every evening I read the electronic issues of approximately 15 United States newspapers and around a dozen international ones. That's not boastful because, truthfully I skim the headlines on most of them. I say only to reinforce the statement that I have not seen the following story in a single domestic paper. I may have missed it but, if I did, it had to have been buried below Joe Biden's bravado or Barney Frank's Peach Cobbler recipe. A Google News search at the time of this writing reveals 5 US sources for this story.

Last Friday two American reporters went missing in North Korea after having been abducted by the military three days before.

That is right: North Korea has arrested two American reporters and those two are now MISSING! The country that re-elected Kim Jong Il with 100% of the vote and that is about to defy the world and launch a communications satellite disguised as an intercontinental ballistic missile is keeping mum on the status and location of the two members of the fourth estate being held in some North Korean estate.

The United States is focused inward, as it usually is, as it deals with a struggling economy. While we self-examine, there is much going on in the world that should catch our eye and demands attention. With Janet Napolitano eliminating the use of the word Terrorism from Homeland Security vernacular, we at least still have Man Caused Disaster.

I'd go in to more detail about the dangers amassing at our borders and the risks we run by ignoring them but Survivor is about to start.

S2