New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani may have sent heads spinning on Tuesday with a book review of Joshua Cooper Ramo’s The Age of the Unthinkable. In summarizing Ramo’s thesis, Kakutani constructs this strangely amoral universe:
Joshua Cooper Ramo
By Tim Graham | April 28, 2009 | 6:25 PM EDT
By Geoffrey Dickens | August 5, 2008 | 1:37 PM EDT
Update at bottom of post.
In a pre-taped segment, delivered from the Forbidden City in Beijing, NBC's Matt Lauer pointed out a poll that showed the Chinese are happier than Americans and repeated his line that protestors could be seen as "party crashers," on Tuesday's "Today" show.
During an interview with NBC News China analyst, Joshua Cooper Ramo, Lauer made the following observation:
LAUER: There's a recent poll that said some very high percentage of the people in China are happy with their lot in life. Something around 80 percent. You compare that to polls in the United States that say only about 25 percent of Americans are, what's the root of their happiness here?
Then a little later in the segment the "Today" co-host, repeating an earlier worry he made on Monday's program, declared the average Chinese citizen would disapprove of any protests: