According to plan, the Bertelsmann Foundation has landed in Washington and has partially taken over the ninth floor of an ultramodern office building in the heart of downtown. It’s actually hard to explain the precise location of the foundation. It is technically on I Street, NW, but Mapquest will tell you it is on New York Avenue. And having just been there the other day, it sort of is. All the more fitting for this mysterious outfit that aspires to be a think-tank like Brookings and AEI. Except that before you know it, Bertelsmann will be telling us what to do. We will all have to wear a microchip embedded in our forehead or on our right arm. It will control Skynet. The foundation is the intellectual arm of Bertelsmann AG, which owns RTL, a German radio and television network, Gruner + Jahr (which publishes over 100 newspapers and magazines), and Random House. It also owns BMG in a joint venture with Sony. Meaning it controls Arista, Columbia Records, and RCA (to name a few) and owns the souls of Beyoncé, Bob Dylan, and Justin Timberlake. In short, it is the Globex Corporation from The Simpsons (“We dominate because we care!”). Fortunately, a friend of mine now runs the foundation’s transatlantic department and invited me to a seemingly harmless press event entitled, “European Activists in the U.S. Presidential Elections: GOTV Lessons for Europe.” As it turns out, Europeans students (and a few graduates) are extremely interested in our presidential election and despite being unable to vote, they are all quite active in various campaigns. The breakdown, according to my notes, was: 4 Europeans for Obama, 3 for Clinton, 1 for Dodd, 1 for Nader, and 1 for McCain. The McCain supporter was a thoughtful Brit named Nicholas Logothetis, who attends George Washington University. He became active with the local College Republicans and believes Senator McCain has the right vision for the country, particularly when it comes to national security. Sadly, the floor beneath him suddenly opened and he disappeared from sight. Seriously, the discussion was quite civil and the Europeans wanted simply to explain how our election will not only decide the future of America but of the world. That is why they work the phone banks. They were also curious about “retail politics” and grassroots campaigning but aren’t sure (and in some cases are doubtful) that this would translate well overseas. They described the average American voter (and fellow American students) as much more politically informed than their European counterparts. And for the Obama supporters, choosing the senator from Illinois would send the proper signal to Europe and the world that America isn’t hopeless. In all, a very tame and informative hour. At first, I saw no signs of a diabolical plot to take over the world. But then there was this: Looking for a bottle of water, I walked around the conference room, behind a divider, to where a technician was working. Next to him were two miniature models: One of the office building and another, smaller in scale, that included the neighborhood. The techie pointed out Union Station and we joked about playing with the tiny cars. But it was no joke. Only later did I realize I had stumbled over the plans for Bertelsmann to control our nation’s railways.
