Diplomacy and simulation

Israeli TV has launched a reality show where the contestants try to sell Israel's message most effectively, including the struggle with the Palestinians Guardian wrote last week.

On one hand that is a very democratising look at foreign politics, that any of us could be a diplomat (that is: any well-educated, intelligent person could do it). But on the other hand, doesn't it kind of trivialise the subject?

Baudrillard, one of the mind-boggling French thinkers on Post Modernity, warns of the dangers of "Virtual Reality" - where the media becomes more real than the "real real". He writes: "Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal..."

In its most negative consequence, as Baudrillard sees it, the simulated becomes more real than the reality. And perhaps we lose contact with the "real real".

The next logical step of "virtuality tv": Every contestant gets control over his own Hellfire equipped drone. Who scores the most points? (Actually in UK at the moment there is a reality show about a group of young people being trained as a bomber crew to relive their grandfathers' experience - you can even try it out yourself here).