P-S-Eh? : YOUR UNITED NATIONS

Look, next-to-last caption, we just spent a whole page explaining that it wasn't magic ...

I think it's a peculiar indication of my youth that I grew up in a time when the United Nations was still at least somewhat revered as a worthwhile body. Of course, we had John Birchers and tinfoil-hat types who predicted UN tomfoolery and conquest at every beat, but it really wasn't until the late Eighties that I started noticing a culture-wide dread of imminent UN occupation of the United States.

Hey, anyone else remember the rumor that stickers on the back of traffic signs secretly indicated to UN troops the best places to quarter their armies after the invasion? That might only have ever been a Southern Arizona thing ...

"For The International Tool of Diplomacy That Has Everything"

Actually, growing up in New York (outside of the city but only a train line away) might help explain why I came of age with a respect for the UN as an institution and facilitator of diplomatic relations. While the rest of the country was being terrorized with the image of out-of-control delegates running mad with the power of their diplomatic immunity, my community was still holding on to the vibrant image of the UN and the good of which it had already exhibited it was capable ...

At the same time, I was affixed to my town's local TV station as well, which was dripping with reruns of black-and-white shows from the Fifties. If you've caught any reference to the UN on What's My Line or You Bet Your Life - especially in an era when Eleanor Roosevelt was still alive and hyping the institution - you picked up a reverence for the august body... whatever the realities of the place happens to be.

I mean, their hearts were in the right place.

It's difficult to imagine comics carrying one-page features like this in the first place, never mind for something as unremittingly celebratory for an organization it seems that many - if not most - Americans disdain, distrust and dislike. Not that we have a lot of alternatives -- I don't see the Kiwanis stepping up to mediate for Qatar ...