Country of the Week

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/26/world/asia/korea-obama-visit/index.html?hpt=wo_c1

Take a moment to read that article before reading any further, please. Help me construct my opinion here. Tell me if I'm being too cynical.

On the one hand, foreign policy is something everyone needs to pay attention to. Citizens have to be informed since they vote for a president every four years the majority of a Congress every two that's responsible for setting that policy. And, let's face it, the broadcast news spends most of its time going on about domestic affairs that it's nice to see their other focus once in a while.

On the other hand, the viewing public never seems to pay attention unless it's one of those countries half the country thinks we should go to war with at one point or another--in this case, North Korea.

I'll take the coverage at any rate, but I can't shake the feeling that North Korea's the country of the week. Last week it was Iran, and once we blew off some steam about them like we need to do every year or two when one of our two political parties needs a patriotically distracting headline, we're onto another one.

Given North Korea's current political vulnerability, its still in progress political succession drama, and its constant determined failures at trying to launch nukes, this country is sort of the comic book villain of "America's enemies", the group that fights our 21st century justice league with George W. Bush at its head, a bottle in one hand and his doctrine in the other. But just because modern politics is still trying to figure out how to expel the tumor that is the Bush doctrine doesn't mean the media has to keep milking it for stories and irresponsibly creating artificial crises for the feartainment of a public still in trauma over the threat of terrorism, much less other actual nations.

I don't criticize the media all too often, but in the way they handle foreign policy, they deserve it.