Paul Thomas: Love is blind to all reason

Asked this week if she thinks North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is insane, American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice replied, "I don't know; I've never met the man".

What a strange thing to say. If, when Ms Rice eventually confronts Kim across the negotiating table, he keeps his clothes on and his hands to himself and refrains from eating the flower arrangement, will that persuade her that he's the full quid regardless of all objective evidence to the contrary?

Perhaps Ms Rice doesn't believe anything she reads in her classified briefing papers, which would be understandable given that American intelligence can't tell a germ warfare laboratory from a milking shed.

However, anyone who can sign off on the material spewed out by the North Korean propaganda machine is, at best, barely on nodding terms with reality.

By definition, personality cults don't know when enough is enough, but the Cult of Kim is pure Walter Mitty. He dashes off operas, out-shoots the North Korean target shooting team and when, just out of curiosity, he turns his hand to golf, he plays a round straight out of Tiger Woods' wildest fantasy, carding 38 under par, with five holes in one.

And like every tyrant who proclaims himself the saviour of his people, he wallows in luxury while they live on bark and nettles.

Everything we know about Kim suggests he's in the grip of egomania, paranoia, megalomania and narcissism. Even by the lax standards of modern psychiatry, four strikes should qualify him for some quiet time in a padded cell.

After all, the Labour Party wanted to send John Tamihere to a shrink for babbling about front bums and Holocaust fatigue.

In the wake of the global media event that was Michael Jackson's acquittal, it is tempting to draw parallels between the cult of personality that has reduced societies to a shuffling column of zombies and the cult of celebrity that exercises such a deadening influence on contemporary culture.

In both cases, the process involves the individual isolating himself from the day-to-day reality behind a palace guard of sycophants and fixers who become his window on the world. They stroke his ego, shield him from news and the consequences of his behaviour even when it becomes self-destructive, and ride the gravy train to the end of the line.

Think of Elvis, hunkered down in Graceland with his good old boys feeding him double helpings of everything that was bad for him until rock'n'roll's most potent sex symbol had degenerated into a nappy-wearing butterball.

Think of Mike Tyson, whose sociopathic savagery reduced a generation of heavyweights to jellyfish, stumbling into a future of unadulterated bleakness without his squandered fortune and vanished entourage.

Think of Wacko Jacko with his bleached skin and artificial features capering around the Neverland Ranch like the Pied Piper. Jackson's former hairdresser said the star knew only one emotion: love.

The hairdresser thinks this shows what a wonderful human being Jackson is but there are other ways of looking at it. Love isn't the answer to all life's vicissitudes, nor is it the appropriate response to every person and situation we encounter on the daily round.

And that's the point: sealed off in Neverland with his stray boys and chimps, Jackson has no concept of the daily round.

He doesn't have to deal with recalcitrant tradesmen or idiotic drivers or unhelpful petty bureaucrats or taxi drivers who don't know the way; he doesn't have to queue or spend an hour on the phone to get a simple answer to a simple question or cope with the various frustrations and challenges of the everyday working life. For that matter, indiscriminate love is a contradiction in terms. It's the emotional equivalent of being permanently pissed.

The other link connecting personality and celebrity cults is the readiness, if not eagerness, of so many people to join up. The most depressing aspect of the Jackson trial was the daily gathering of true believers outside the courthouse.

No doubt they think Jackson was the victim of a sinister conspiracy but even if the evidence against him was irrefutable, even if he had confessed to every charge, their adoration wouldn't waver.

In their grand scheme of things, it's an irrelevance. Given their idol's towering genius, a few molested children are neither here nor there.

Jung Chang of Wild Swans fame has just produced a biography of Mao Tse-Tung which argues he murdered at least 70 million people.

She recalls that even as her parents were being denounced by the Red Guards, she was overcome with shame at having written a poem expressing mild reservations about Mao's regime.

But then the 16-year-old Jung Chang had an excuse. Like the North Koreans who remain fanatically devoted to the monster who has literally made their lives a misery, she had been brainwashed.