Adaredevil hung upside down for 60 hours high above a pond in Central Park for an ABC special last week as the financial markets teetered on the brink of apparent collapse. David Blaine survived, and with luck and a brief bridging of the partisan gulf that has divided us for far too long, hopefully we will, too. But the Blaine special, which had to be pushed back 15 minutes or so to let the president tell us we were on the brink of financial disaster, reminded us of those grainy black-and-white newsreels from the 1930s of flagpole sitters and others whose dangerous stunts tried to distract a nation in the depths of the Depression. We half-expected to see suddenly down-at-the heels stockbrokers selling used Apple iPods on Wall Street from pushcarts.
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