Impromptus Does Davos

Reading Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus columns at NRO are one of my favorite Internet pleasures. There aren't many who can as deftly wring the irony out of a statement or situation as Nordlinger (maybe Mark Steyn - and that is saying something).

For the past few years Impromptus has covered the World Economic Forums in Davos, Switzerland. This is Nordlinger's first report from this year's conference. The meeting is truly a who's who of the politically rich and famous.

Jay lists off the rich and famous and one thought kept coming to mind, "I wonder how many of these folks were on Saddam Hussein's payroll as part of the Oil for Food scam?" Jay continues on his reporting and ends describing Sharon Stone opining on the AIDS crisis:

The gist of her [Stone's] remarks is that AIDS is readily solvable, but that "greed and arrogance stop us." We — we richies — simply don't want to spend enough, simply don't care enough. We are stingy and callous. (No mention is made of the Bush administration's remarkable efforts in Africa — efforts that the most knowledgeable and fair-minded can't help hailing.) Finishing up, the actress says, "If we just stopped arrogantly killing people all over the world, and channeled the money into AIDS, we would have a solution."

In a certain symmetry to the article - Stone's comment left me wondering if all the money Saddam Hussein used to blackmail world leaders and opinion makers and all the money used to build his palaces were put to finding a cure for AIDS if the crisis would be over (or at least much closer to being over)? I wouldn't expect someone like Sharon Stone to ask that question though. Somehow I find Stone's comments more insulting than a UN representative calling us "stingy" in the face of the tsunami devestation.

To paraphrase something I once read on the A-List about Streisand - everything Sharon Stone says is charged with self-loving vulgarity. That about covers it.