Gordon to the Rescue

By ROGER COHEN
NYT

If, as a British prime minister, you get a five-minute segment on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” you know you’ve made it, especially when the much-loved Stewart describes your country as a place that “gets about two hours of sunshine a year” and resembles a “coffee-less Seattle.”

Stewart, as usual, had his news antennae finely tuned, lauding Gordon Brown, a man of Heathcliffian moodiness, for giving Americans a kick up the backside. He showed a clip of Brown telling a joint session of Congress that, more than the indispensable nation (Madeleine Albright’s phrase), America is the “irrepressible nation.”

Now, Stewart riffed, turning to an American audience still shell-shocked by finding blue chips trading as penny stocks and their pensions disappearing faster than a sense of humor in Barack Obama’s Washington: “Get out of bed you slugger and go out and invade the sub-continent!”

(More here.)