17 Standing Ovations - but beyond Capitol Hill?

TV ad break for Brown
From Today's Scotsman

"AN INDICATION of the importance that Americans attach to Gordon Brown's speech before a joint session of the US Congress yesterday came when CNN broke off its live coverage – to go to a commercial break.

Mr Brown might have been only the fifth British prime minister to be invited to address Congress, but the cable broadcaster saw no reason not to cut him off in mid-sentence to screen adverts for diet foods and car insurance.

Most of the US media have given Mr Brown's visit fleeting mention – or simply none at all. It is not that Americans don't like the British – rather that this is a country so preoccupied with its banking bail-outs, housing meltdowns and crumbling economy that it has little time left over to consider anyone else.

Mr Brown might have arrived in the US with a message that the president, Barack Obama, needs to start addressing the world's economic woes, but there is little debate in the media or on the streets for the new White House incumbent to look beyond his own front door."

This report is confirmed by my own limited experience: The day before GB's visit, I e-mailed my old friend James Morrison, a senior correspondant for The Washington Times, trying to interest him in a topical Obama - Brown - Burns link. He e-mailed me back confessing he was unaware Brown was even coming over to his city. "Typical insular American?" Well James is a main man in the Washington DC Tartan Day Committee, someone who has volunrtarily done as much to put Scotland bacl on the US map than anyone - a mover and a shaker by any definition.

But unmoved by the King of Kirkcaldy.

James did write a little though - read about him and his brief take on oor Gord here

A friend of Scotland , for sure