If I Can Make It There….

It was quite a week at the United Nations in New York. Not since Nikita Krushchev pounded the table with his shoe have there been such performances. And now that the speeches are done, it's time for the reviews.

Now, I could analyze it as a foreign correspondent, or as a student of International Relations, but I think covering it as a reviewer at a comedy club would be more fun. So, let's recap shall we?

First of all, only one person popped the room.

In comedian parlance, that means, rocking the house… taking it over and making it their own…or killing.

Every seasoned comedian knows when they "kill." So does the audience. There is an electricity to it that is undeniable. When you pop a room, you know it.

So, let's look at who worked the room:

Kofi Annan opened the show Tuesday morning. Fair enough, his room.

He brought on Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil. He didn't have a strong set, but then it's not surprising as he is still an open miker as far as the world stage is concerned.

George Bush had the morning headlining spot and turned in a fairly pedestrian set. He really needs to write some new material. Plus given his off stage antics, he had an uphill battle with the crowd.

Thabo Mbeki of South Africa had to follow Mr. Bush, not a fun spot.

The rest of the morning was pretty slow.

There was some excitement in the afternoon though. It was standing room only as everyone crowded into the room to check out Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the kid from Iran who is hot now. In his set here last year he showed some promise and he has been working regularly at home and getting a lot of ink. His set ran a bit long and as all political comics do from time to time, he lectured a bit.

But the biggest surprise came on Wednesday morning when, for the first time, someone worked blue. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez came in and opened with a Noam Chomsky reference, called yesterday's headliner George Bush the devil, and said that the stage still smelled of sulphur from Bush's set. And that was just in the first few minutes!! Talk about going for the crowd's throat.

The kid is hot right now. He had the room eating out of the palm of his hand.

After his set at the UN he worked a few more rooms in Manhattan, with each set wilder than the last. He reminded me a lot of the take no prisoner's style of Sam Kinison.

But for all the polemics and fist pounding, the name calling, and the posturing…. everyone….and I mean EVERYONE….all the dictators, all the tinpot generals, all the despots….have one thing in common:

You ain't nobody on the world stage till you've played New York.

Having a nice day?

So Labor Day came and went. Darfur Had a lovely barbecue with lots of great friends, tons of food, starvation and plenty of cold beer. The Bay Bridge was closed for repairs so the city was quiet refugees and there was no one around genocide and for a change the peace indiscriminate attacks against women and children and quiet was nice.

Now life is back to normal, get up, go to work, get the dry cleaning, do some shopping live a normal life.

As I plan to go to bed on this routine, boring Tuesday night, there is a report from Reuters that Sudan's government has started bombing the civilians in Darfur.

I could try to describe it, but perhaps U.N Humanitarian chief Jan Egeland says it best:

"In Darfur, in many ways, we are in free fall. Mass murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing -- that's very visible on the ground."

In my neighborhood any one of either mass murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing is usually good enough to bring a cop car. Maybe even two.

The folks in Darfur got all four. And ain't it the truth? There's never a cop around when you need one.

It's not like Darfur is something we didn't know about. It's been going on for a while now. Over the weekend, one of the refugees was quoted as saying, "we are going to be massacred."

Looks like he was right. Only, no one heard him.