“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

My only connection to the Balkan-Bosnian-Bruhaha is having lived in the same graduate student housing as President Ejup Ganic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejup_Gani%C4%87

Nevertheless, the American Government seems compelled to “take sides” in every damn dispute whether it is backing Serbia when a trained gunman shoots Archduke Franz Ferdinand or having Ramadan dinner in Sandzak to support Moslem separatism in the Balkans:

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2742

That made me laugh. I suspect at some point in the future I shall use that line with great relish; and regret I hadn’t thought of it but only stole it.

As for Hollywood – once a dream factory, now a propaganda town, and always unaccountably financially corrupt – it now finds itself in a morass of ephebophiliacs. There’s a movie there – not an Angie vehicle but certainly one for George (Clooney).