The Prime Minister's assorted groupies are having conniptions because he appeared on Fox TV to tell the Yanks how to get out of their economic malaises, not realising, apparently, that the United States are not, exactly, floundering in the depths of depression, for all that Fox TV would dearly love them to be, said Fox TV not being - how should one put it? - precisely the best of President Obama's Best Best Friends.

They are not Obama's Best Buds because a) he's black b) he's black c) he's a Democrat and d) he promotes free health care, horror of horrors. Oh, and e) he's black.

One has to assume that Muscat went on Fox after being granted an audience, for all five seconds or however long it takes to snap a piccy, with the Leader of the Free World and his First Lady, because otherwise, the beaming smile that Obama had pasted on might have slipped slightly.

It might have slipped not only (or even at all) because Muscat had been on to the network that is so radically opposed to anything decent that Obama tries to achieve (a point that has gone completely above and beyond the heads of Muscat's breathless admirers) but because Obama would probably have been genuinely amused to see how our intrepid PM hadn't even noticed the mild mickey-taking that was being perpetrated on him.

I mean, for Heaven's sake, the leader of a country the size of a moderately small town in the mid-West of the United States was asked what golden words of advice he has for one of the world's most enormous economies and he doesn't even get the irony of the situation?

Of course, to be fair to Dr Muscat, it may even be the case that Fox TV don't realise how teeny-weeny we are and in their desperation to be given a tenth of a degree of credibility will take any Prime Minister, but I have this sneaking suspicion that this was a bit of a side-show, perhaps a subtle dig at Obama on the lines of "hey, boy, this is the level we pitch you at".

As to the content of Muscat's couple of minutes of interview, it was the usual bunch of platitudes any PM would resort to when he hasn't much of a clue of the interviewer's agenda. I might have misheard, though at one point Muscat seemed to put us alongside "other Asian countries" or words to that effect, but I suspect that the point he was making had more to do with the distance between the States and us and countries in Asia rather than it being a slip of Freudian dimensions.

Given your average American's grasp of geography (and you don't get more average than a Fox TV viewer) whatever Musca meant, it means that from now on we're going to be lumped in with China, Korea and Japan, so when they get to see Enemalta's Board of Directors team photo in a few months, they're not going to be surprised.

It would have been nice, though, if when asked how come Malta is in such good nick economically, Muscat had had the candour to answer with the same wise-crack he used when the Leader of the Opposition asked about his plans for Air Malta.

"Ask Tonio Fenech" would have been a much more accurate response to Fox TV asking how come we are in good shape than his wishy-washy mumbling about strategic location and being well positioned to get a toe into Europe - perhaps for a minute he thought he was on All China TV.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.