But we get far more worked up over John Key's ponytail weird-out or the slow death of Campbell Live, neither of which warrants the Shakespearian cry, "Something wicked this way comes".
Indeed, the bean counters and philistines who cut John Campbell off at the knees might argue that the contrast vindicates their preference for bread and circuses.
As an aside and without drawing any conclusions from it, I wonder how many Kiwis would agree with each of these propositions:
Ponytailgate is a disgrace that shows Key is unfit for high office.
Campbellgate is a disgrace that shows MediaWorks is unfit to own a TV network.
We should pull our troops out of Iraq forthwith and stay out of a fight that's got nothing to do with us.
But then, what are those who advocate humanitarian intervention to make of US Defence Secretary Ash Carter's assessment that the Iraqi forces who failed to defend Ramadi showed "no will to fight" despite their overwhelming numerical superiority?
I never thought I'd have occasion to say this but Ron Mark and Barack Obama are pretty much of one mind. The New Zealand First defence spokesman says the Kiwi trainers are on a mission impossible because the Iraqis are "cowards". Unblessed with the former mayor of Carterton's succinctness, the US President says "if the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodation necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them".
As one of the few American politicians to have unequivocally opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Obama could have added that it requires a leap of faith to believe the problem of Isis can be solved by the very same means that created it in the first place: Western military intervention. A corollary to that would be that since the US caused the problem, it has a moral responsibility to resolve it.
Hard on the heels of Carter's scorn, America itself copped a similar blast from an unlikely source: Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds force.
Soleimani has emerged as one of the most powerful and intriguing figures in the Middle East: he's been branded a terrorist mastermind by the West; he was in Syria assisting the Assad regime and is now in Iraq directing the Shia militias; in Iran he somehow manages to be simultaneously a power behind the throne and a rising political star. This guy, who incidentally bears a passing resemblance to actor George Clooney, said Obama's unwillingness to do "a damn thing" to confront Isis showed America had no stomach for the fight.
This is a remarkable statement coming from a leading hardliner in a regime that has never previously welcomed an American presence in the region and hints at a bigger, murkier picture: that the fight against Isis is merely the opening exchange in a war between the contending denominations of Islam and the parallel struggle for regional dominance between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.
Which begs the question: if the situation in Iraq and Syria is part of a wider conflict we barely understand and which may go on for years and escalate unpredictably, what on earth are we doing there?
