In Breve

First the Good News. Fox's new pundit (from the Indian pandit or learned man, or woman), Sarah Palin's first appearance opposite a discountenanced and wary Bill O'Reilly -- let's give him credit for wondering how the devil she turned up -- setlles the matter once and for all: the 'fair and balanced' Murdoch network has now gone public as a home for Boobs and Folly. A nice confirmation of the Obvious. A 'news' service that hires a former candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States is in fact an enlarged Op-Ed Page for yet another loony of the right. Further good news is the thought that Palin will perforce learn a little geography and be launched into the Fox orbit where no fool fears to tread. She and Hannety (or is it Hannity?) make an ideal couple: were they otherwise without ties.

Roughly at the same time another enormity of Nature, a powerful earthquake, struck Haiti. I hope that everyone who reads this contributes, for Haiti is one of the world's marvels, a nation at roughly the same time as the United States, it has always been tormented by open warfare between black and mulatto, yet has also produced a remarkable culture (Roumains, Alexis) and a proud people. I feel privileged to have known many Haitians: an upstanding people whose prophet, Toussaint Louverture, was left to perish in a frigid prison in Joux by the selfsame 'revolutionaries' in France. To build his mountain fastness, the emperor Christophe had stone mounted by gangs of a hundred rolling logs uphill; the more perished in the task, the harder the remainder had to labor. Good times have been few. In Puerto Rico I knew some Duvalier acolytes and some opponents, exiled to the borough of Queens. A fine, a desperate people.

But America remains America, and the news had, until the earthequake, focused on the Great American Problem: Messrs Leno and O'Brien. I watched bemused, never having watched either of them. Just how important news are two performers whose every word is scripted beforehand? Just how are they worth their millions and their celebrity?