Have you seen the cover story at this week's Czech Business Weekly? Not yet? Well then please check it out.

This edition has reporter Brian McCabe writing about the differences between the Czech and Slovak Republics' capitals, spruced up by the CBW's usual fluffy accessorizing economic fanfare. Yet like the Irish say, it sure does make for good crack.

The oomph-like thrust of McCabe's piece seems to centre on the classic rivalry between Blava and Praha, whether it's more of a locally-spun fiction or the Middle European thin-broth chimera that it actually is.

Ask any Western European, folks -- let alone an American or a Brazilian -- and the general consensus is that there really aren't many concrete differences between the former federalist foes.

Jaggers!

Czech, Slovak, Czechoslovak...you're all from the same place, aren't you? If you're "Czech," doesn't that also mean you're Slovak? Where is Bratislava? Is that in Narnia?

These are some of the questions I find people nudging me with me when I'm "representin'" abroad. High IQ-types, like some of the commenters occasionally posting here.

Ho-hum, er...yeah. It's sad, but true, kids.

Just as North Americans often consider themselves to be the absolute centre of the Milky Way galaxy, so do we locals.

Come to think of it, with all the commotion about such subtle Czech-Slovak differences roiling about in venerable P-Town -- especially at some workplaces where Slovaks and Czechs mingle in such close proximity -- you'd think this were an issue of the utmost national importance. On a par with the proposed "early-missile warning installation" down and across in Little Brdy.

Personally, I find it perplexing that features like the CBW's continue to get such traction in the mainline press here (a Czech translation of the story -- if you prefer -- can be found here). I think it belies something more insidious about the local media scene (it's boring), and for those who practice in it, the signs clearly point in one direction...get us somewhere, anywhere, but please not here!

Devoting more than three magazine pages to the relative differences between Bratislava and Prague -- content more suited to a Wikipedia entry, if you ask me -- is a quaint example of an editorial board throwing its hands to the High Heavens in a desperate search for an angle (not angel, that wasn't a syntax error). It's also an affront to our forests, wind-blown as they've been of late.

A story worthier of more serious analysis -- a topic which was merely alluded to in the article by its quoted financial maestros -- would be about the pace of fiscal and monetary reform in this nation. How the expected recession on the other side of the kiddie pond is going to hammer us -- ouch, and hard.

The Fourth Estate has a role in continuing to expose this unrepentant spin-doctoring on the part of the ruling financial gurus (be they blue, green, or red), and the media's perpetual kowtowing complacency in this regard will only come home to roost when the manure starts hitting the fan's spinning blades.

How about a story per week in the pages of a magazine with the brass testes the size of CBW's? Backed up by Mr. Komarek's hard-earned (and rapidly-shrinking!) crown billions, it shouldn't be a big risk.

Isn't it better to earn the admiration of your readership by refusing to take a weak-kneed stance on the impending financial doom which shall eventually land on our Bohemian shores? Unlike, the, um....major Czech dailies?

This reluctance is demeaning, insulting, and patronizing. To refuse to regularly communicate the true state of economic affairs to the Czech citizenry is in breach of the good faith trust we have in the free press. Especially for those whose incomes and net worths will take a shellacking as a result.

Heaven forfend what journos would do if they didn't have access to the 'net!

The dearth of due financial analysis in the mainline press acts like a self-censoring chill that persists despite the absence of the shackles which would otherwise keep it thusly bound.

--ADM