IT'S U.N. WEEK AGAIN!

It's that magic time in New York City again, the General Assembly of the United Nations, when world leaders gather together to pay lip service to the U.N. before going back home to do the unneighborly things the U.N. is designed to discourage. Stuff like oppressing their people, making war, practicing genocide, letting large chunks of their populations starve to death, stealing the wealth of their nations, harboring terrorists, those sort of things. But for one week in the city that never sleeps, all the various heads of states get to pretend that they are the nearest thing to Ghandi. It's all a farce, we know it, they know it and we just put up with their blowhard lies and move on.

So, the only interesting thing to happen this week is the revelation of what keeps the spring in the step and the smile on the face of the President of France, one Nicolas Sarkozy. That would be Carla Bruni Sarkozy, his beautiful and sexy wife. Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy is a model, singer, songwriter and actress born in Italy. She was the daughter of a Brazilian classical guitarist with whom her mother had an affair but was raised by her mother and her husband, a wealthy Italian industrialist and classical composer. Not exactly the life path one expects from the First Lady of France, but she is adored by the French anyway.

And getting a look at her, it's easy to see why. A long legged, slender beauty with a beguiling smile and a model's poise, she charms and disarms any potential critics of her past nude modeling sessions. Why anyone would complain about naked photographs of a beautiful woman is another matter, but the French are pretty okay with that stuff. What her politics are is not so clear, but then again, who cares? It's her husband who's President of The French Republic, not her. As First Lady, she dutifully attends luncheons on world literacy and shows up on her husband's arm when he makes a public appearance, and that's petty much all any nation should expect from their first ladies.

So, to sum up The United Nations General Assembly of 2008, a bunch of politicians got up and lied, nothing was done about the 36,000 people who die every single day of starvation, little was said about the pockets of genocide in Africa, no mention was made of all the wars the world is currently waging and no word uttered on the continued enslavement of Muslim women, like half of a billion of them. It was all about the stock market collapse and Carla Bruni, and Ms. Bruni was by far the more interesting subject. Here's hoping her husband what's-his-name keeps getting elected so we can see more of her around here.