This past weekend, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw accompanied U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on a tour of Alabama, her home state. At a University of Alabama football game, Mr. Straw was announced as being in attendance, confirming attendees’ suspicions about a “special visitor” in the crowd.

However, even though he’d been announce by name on the local TV, by the PA announcer, by the local paper, and via many other sources, people were hard pressed to remember Mr. Straw’s name:

“You’re the English guy,” Joyce Delahoussaye said as she shook hands with the foreign minister of America’s closest ally.

“I’ve seen you on TV, and they said you were from England.”

“He’s Mr. England,” she said, introducing Straw to her son, Randy, as the two diplomats met displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina in Pelham.

At a ceremony to unveil statues in Birmingham, speakers variously called the visitor Mr. Shaw and Mr. Snow.

They also mangled his title, appointing him secretary of state to the commonwealth of the United Kingdom.

It’s really sad the people can’t remember such simple things, given that they wre repeated ad infinitum in the local media. I guess it’s the “Sesame Street effect” that Neil Postman wrote about in Amusing Ourselves To Death.

But the even sadder thing is that in a world that is increasingly global, people don’t know the names of the power players in world politics – especially those of our allies. Now I’m not looking for people to be able to name all of the members of the British parliament, or to know the name of the minister of cultural affairs in Japan. But U.S. citizens should at least know the basic structure of governments in other lands, and the titles of the “big three” or “big four” positions in said governments.

It’s this kind of ignorance that gives the U.S. a very poor image to outsiders: as an ignorant, apathetic, and dumb people. It’s an image that we desperately need to fix – the sooner, the better.