Okay not quite. But I did find it interesting that the former US Ambassador to the UN has taken the time, between lambasting his former boss’s policies towards North Korea and Iran, to attack the recent partnership between the United Nations and Marvel comics to create an issue of Spiderman that follows him crusading alongside UN peacekeepers, aid workers and envoys.
Interestingly enough, I actually first found this on BBC Arabic, but the story can be read here:
John Bolton, the outspoken former US envoy to the UN, called it an “act of desperation”.
He said the world body should concentrate on improving its overall performance.
“You can have Spiderman in a comic book all you want, but it’s not going to change public perception,” he told the BBC.
I doubt anyone has any pretenses that this comic is going to address the reforms much needed at the UN. But the comic, intended to be distributed to US students, has a constructive purpose. It seeks to illuminate the myriad of UN functions and responsibilities to be better understood by America’s next generation whose task it will be to repair the damage done to our international standing — a task, it should not be forgotten, left to them by folks like John Bolton.
Bolton’s challenge of the effort seems capricious and unwarranted. The UN is trying to adapt to modern communications styles with new marketing tools that dispel perceptions of a calcified bureaucracy, much like the Presidential candidates resorting to Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps Bolton is green with envy (like a certain arch nemesis of Spidey’s).
What does strike me as a bit desperate is the White House’s Barneycam, but that’s a tale for another post.
As for Bolton, after making enemies at the UN, the State Department, and the White House let it be known that he’s now on record — against Spiderman.
–Sameer Lalwani
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