It is, one notes with the weary affection reserved for a third Die Hard, another international incident dressed as entertainment. Wire services this week determined that The End of Oak Street is a gonzo good time, a verdict solemnly republished by outlets that ordinarily cannot agree on the time of day, and the world's more restless foreign ministries have responded in the only language they still remember: the emergency summit.
Delegations convened in a rented ballroom outside Geneva to decide whether the phrase constitutes a finding of fact, a diplomatic courtesy, or merely the latest disappointing sequel in humanity's long-running franchise about pretending a film notice is news. The original dispatch was circulated in fourteen languages, none of them, several envoys complained, the language of restraint.
"We have seen this picture before," said Harriet Penhaligon, spokeswoman for the Provisional Secretariat on Shared Cultural Assessments, a body assembled overnight and already requesting a catering budget. "A film is released. A wire service declares it a good time of one sort or another. Capitals then feel obliged to take a position, as if Oak Street were a disputed border and gonzo a recognised category under the Vienna Convention."
The talks, as talks will, produced a working group, a drafting committee, and a minority report insisting that Oak Street has not, in any legally meaningful sense, ended. A rival paper, tabled by Klaus-Emil Vorg of the League of Neutral Projectionists, argued that the street in question is metaphorical and therefore cannot be the subject of a final status agreement.
