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Rhetoric is one thing that the stop-and-start global diplomacy over climate change has never lacked. It's the strength of political principle that has been the truly threatened resource. For eight years, that was largely the fault of the U.S. Under former President George W. Bush, U.S. diplomats played an obstructionist role in climate-change talks, and even before Bush's arrival, the country failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol - the international treaty intended to curb global warming. The U.S. Senate rejected the pact by a cool 95-0, and Bush later pulled it off the table...
...votes had barely been counted last November when the pundits started expressing anxiety. No, not just about whether the new President could right the economy or reform health care. The burning question for the Obama age: What the heck were political comedians going to do? For eight years they had enjoyed a comedic gift from the gods in George W. Bush, whose bumbling presidency provided even richer material than the cartoonish excesses of the Clinton years. But Obama, with his obvious smarts, low-key style and (most important) ability to catch the prevailing tone of irony and laugh at himself...
...years has, if anything, only gotten sharper. (Yes, he was forced to apologize for a joke about Palin's daughter, but his obvious distaste for the former Alaska governor is evident in the wisecracks that have continued ever since.) In fact, Letterman's monologues have doubled in length - from eight jokes a night to 16 or more - in the past year. "Sure, we'd love to see Obama trip on an Oriental rug," says Letterman writer Bill Scheft. "But there's plenty there. Have you seen those town-hall meetings...
...particular, he wonders why, eight years after 9/11, there is still no first-responder communications system so that police and fire departments across the country can communicate in the event of an attack. And he worries about the continued lack of tracking ability for foreign nationals who overstay their visas. "We don't know today if everybody who came in lawfully with a visa in the last five years has gone home," he says. "What happened to that sense of urgency...
Natascha Kampusch's story is perhaps even more troubling. The Austrian girl was abducted at age 10 and held for eight years in a windowless cellar by her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil. She ran away in August 2006. Yet upon learning that he had thrown himself in front of a train a few hours after she escaped, she reportedly burst into tears. "All I can say is that, bit by bit, I feel more sorry for him," Kampusch said in a 2007 documentary intended to mark her first year of freedom, calling Priklopil a "poor soul - lost and misguided." (Experts note...