TigerHawk

TigerHawk (ti*ger*hawk): n. 1. The title of this blog and the nom de plume of its founding blogger; 2. A deep bow to the Princeton Tigers and the Iowa Hawkeyes; 3. The nickname for Iowa's Hawkeye logo. Posts include thoughts of the day on international affairs, politics, things that strike us as hilarious and personal observations. The opinions we express are our own, and not those of each other, our employers, our relatives, our dead ancestors, or unrelated people of similar ethnicity.

Monday, October 03, 2005

"Fantasy" world government

By TigerHawk at 10/03/2005 06:19:00 AM

While you're thinking about something serious like the World Series or last night's episode of "Desperate Housewives," the BBC has been polling 15,000 people around the world and asking them who they would like to lead a "fantasy" world government. That the BBC would characterize a world government as a "fantasy" rather than a "nightmare" is troubling enough, but the list of winning candidates to lead the world sends shivers down one's spine:

1 - Nelson Mandela
2 - Bill Clinton
3 - Dalai Lama
4 - Noam Chomsky
5 - Alan Greenspan
6 - Bill Gates
7 - Steve Jobs
8 - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
9 - Richard Branson
10 - George Soros
11 - Kofi Annan

Below the top 11 (which the BBC put into a handy table, stretching, line Spinal Tap, for that last bit of noise in its listing of Kofi Annan) the world's great unwashed preferred poverty and failure to the current American president.

US President George W Bush was placed 43, ranking below two of his fiercest adversaries on the world stage, Fidel Castro - 36th - and Hugo Chavez, 33rd.

Like, how come Kim Jong-il didn't make the list?

President Bush at least finished ahead of Osama bin Laden (70th), which is gratifying since more than half the people who took this online poll came from the United States. That Noam Chomsky came in fourth suggests that there is no small sampling problem, but that should give us cold comfort. A better sample would have undoubtedly moved bin Laden far up the list.

Via Charles Johnson, who observed that "we're doomed."

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4 Comments:

By Anonymous, at Mon Oct 03, 08:25:00 AM:

lol ... "fantasy" is right. We have a UN as at least a governing body for the world's ills, and a history with the folks on this list.

One has to wonder if a follow on survey would determine that people were goofing around when responding.

By cakreiz, at Mon Oct 03, 10:29:00 AM:

Is this like fantasy football? Peyton Manning, Noam Chomsky and a future draft pick to be named later?

You can't tell me that 15,000 people knew who Noam Chomsky is. 15,000 bored political bloggers? Yes. 15,000 ordinary folks? No way.

By Charlottesvillain, at Mon Oct 03, 11:41:00 AM:

Shocked and dismayed that Jimmy Carter did not make the list. Or Sean Penn for that matter...

By Anonymous, at Mon Oct 03, 02:53:00 PM:

You forgot to mention JANE FONDA,MICHEAL MOORE,AL GORE,ANDROSS,MEGATRON,MINI ME,JIMMY CARTER,