Excuse the minor rant. Before the game, channel-surfing for a moment at about 1:20 PM (8:20 AM ET), I thought I’d tune in FNC (shown in Britain on Sky channel 510) to see what they were yammering about. Three twinkies scholars on “Fox and Friends Saturday” were giggling over chewing over the big news of the past week.

The first story they lined up as “big”?: of course, it was Sen Obama (whom I do NOT support) having referred to a woman reporter as “sweetie”. However, within moments, I had to change the channel, for not only did I feel my IQ rapidly diminishing by the second, but it was just too squirm in your seat embarrassing to watch.

I’m one of those always quick to jump on non-Americans who presume Americans to be intellectual lightweights. Yet there are those times when you have to be half-sympathetic to those people in their ignorance. Given that many of them might well get some of their “insights” about Americans’ gravitas thanks to such silliness being positioned by a major American media (news is far too strong a word) source as a serious issue from the week just ended, one can actually rather understand some abroad holding the misconception that most Americans are little more than babbling, dimwitted, overgrown teenagers.

It was a week that has also seen perhaps hundreds of thousands die in Burma, and tens of thousands in China. Sen Obama’s poor choice of when to say “sweetie” shouldn’t rate even as a blip on any normal news-gathering radar. Although, then again, obviously it does for the blips that seem all too often to pass for the brains employed at FNC, that is.