Networking in the name of goodwill
BEHIND THE HEADLINES | By BUNN NAGARA 
thestar.com.my
Yet another annual international gala event comes by, for what it's worth.
THEY come from all over, but not everyone has the right to appear onstage to bask in the annual media limelight and popular adulation. There were earlier rounds at more localised levels, but this weekend's activities crown it all.
Anxious participants groom and preen themselves for the year's big event, conscious of their global marketability if they do well. They will want to save the world, or at least they say they do, because an image of social responsibility helps hide any selfishness or frivolity.
It is the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas. And it is the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos.
Few other internationally hyped events give participants such opportunities to feel important and sound intelligent. And when they believe they have earned the right to these opportunities, the wheels of these global service industries keep turning.
But as participants sip their five-star cocktails while pondering world peace and other nuggets of high-mindedness, the rest of the world toils and burns.
Lebanon is ruptured again, while a Paris conference decides how best to assist; Israel's president is accused of multiple rapes and goes on leave; Gaza is bombed once more; China's economy is poised to displace Germany's as third largest; and Iraq is Iraq, getting worse.
In Afghanistan the Taliban regroups, foreigners are abducted in Nigeria, Japan builds its armed forces, and people suffer further in the US Guantanamo Bay prison. Then former Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu wants to put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on trial for his statements.
My call: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks up at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday. He urged rich countries to help the developing world by making concessions in the deadlocked Doha round of global trade talks. --AFPpic
Since attempts to indict President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for war crimes have failed, this one against the Iranian president might just succeed, such is the skewed world situation.
But mention it in Davos and you might not be invited back, raise it in Vegas and you could be shown the door.
Better, then, to look studious and recount some familiar gripes: President Putin's dangerous unreliability, China's Internet censorship and dubious human rights, and Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest. Don't mention Omar Deghayes, a young refugee in Britain abused and locked in an animal cage at Guantanamo for the sixth year now without charge or family visits.
For all this and more, the World Social Forum (WSF) this week in Nairobi seemed like it might actually tackle the real issues. The WSF was devised as the people's equivalent of the more business-minded WEF.
The Miss America pageant began in 1921, evolving over the years for greater acceptability and popularity. So has the WEF, which began in 1971.
This year, both events share a new development: a degree of audience participation, which helps maintain viewer interest. Both have also been criticised for focusing on Caucasian individuals, with non-white ethnic groups remaining under-represented.
But there are some differences: the US beauty pageant is mostly about young women while the Swiss talkfest is mostly about old men.
This year, Miss America has come clean and dropped the previous years' pretence of presenting the contestants as scholars. Without alienating puritans, there seems less need this time to deny that the most popular segment is the "swimsuit category".
But with the contest no less fierce among WEF stars for influence and prestige, none appears willing to drop the scholar's mask. And no groupie there is likely to squeeze into a swimsuit, since that might just reveal too much of themselves.