Hollywood Is Part of the Solution

Other than the Paula Abdul thing, the most disturbing trends in the news this week are the continued lack of a coherent North Korea policy and the inability of the armed services recruiters to meet their quotas. It’s safe to say our coming invasion of that nation will be undermanned.

In the interest of forging detente between Hollywood and Washington, I have a plan. If the most significant American export today is pop culture, why not harness it in the cause of peace? To wit: although Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie have sadly ended their partnership, the show must, and according to Fox, will, go on. So why not do the next installment of The Simple Life in Pyongyang? Who wouldn’t thrill to the site of a shiny American heiress scrounging for rice in an Asian alley? Scuffing her pedicure as she pulled a bicycle rickshaw? Dressed in clingy peasant wear while goose-stepping next to a hunky North Korean soldier? It would show the inhabitants of that benighted nation that we are just folks, thereby rendering them less likely to launch an ICBM toward Disneyland.

Pudgy tyrant Kim Jong Il is rumored to have a taste for young, foreign women. Can you say Lindsay Lohan? The busy starlet is about to open in the eagerly anticipated Herbie: Fully Loaded. With the fate of the world at stake, why do another boring Hollywood premiere? A phone call here, some baksheesh there, and the red carpet could lead to the Supreme Leader’s screening room. Anyone versed in foreign policy knows a visit from Lindsay = 100,000 troops massing on the DMZ. And what do you think the diminutive Communist would rather have?

At this anxious juncture in history, we mustn’t give in to despair. Rather, it is incumbent upon us to find new paradigms. When will it become clear to our leaders the road to a more peaceful world does not run through the Pentagon, but, rather, through Hollywood? Along with the Secretaries of Defense and State, there is a clear need for a Secretary of Show Business. But who could conceivably fill this exalted position? Who has the stature? And most important, who is available? There is only one answer:

“Mr. Ovitz? Bin Laden on line two. He wants to meet the Olsen twins!”