Even as the media feverishly debates the paternity of the Republican vice-presidential candidate's granddaughter and the difficulties associated with sitting through an Obama speech without either dancing or dozing off, these important Asian stories are being relegated to the back pages. The first of these stories gets some coverage, but perhaps without any comprehensive analysis of its longer-term ramifications; the second and third are virtually missing from all media.
These stories are: firstly, the encirclement of Pakistan; secondly the resurgence of Han nationalism and thirdly the trend towards Hindu fanaticism.
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As a postscript to the above, one thought that does strike a chord is the likelihood that future US elections will matter a whole lot less to the rest of the world. The decline of the sole superpower, along with a concurrent emergence of alternative powers on the military, ideological and economic fronts, means that parts of the global media could well be disengaged from US election reviews - that is, regurgitating the latest specials from US media outlets - to doing something a lot more productive in their own backyards.
The opposite side of that loop is that the column inches devoted to candidate discussions could well decline in the US media itself, as the relative importance of the rest of the world becomes increasingly apparent.
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