As the stories this week collapse into one another, the end of the news cycle could signal the end of the world. Call a preacher
If you haven't already sold your house and given the proceeds to an evangelical preacher, step away from this column now. The end of the world starts at 6pm on 21 May, according to one of the usual American suspects, so you may still have time to make arrangements for the Rapture – the fundamentalist Christian equivalent of the last helicopter out of Saigon.
You'll have clocked the portents all week. A fortnight ago it would have been unthinkable to mention Chris Huhne's name in the same sentence as Arnold Schwarzenegger's, even with recourse to Kevin Bacon, but now the two are the most familiar of bedfellows in commentariat observations about powerful men and their scorned wives. Room for a little one? Then roll over for suicide-eiderdowned former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose arrest in New York on attempted rape charges has seen Britain renew its special relationship with the US, standing shoulder to shoulder with our old ally as they sarcastically bellow, "WELL DONE YOU CHEESE-EATING SECRET SQUIRRELS!" across the Atlantic.
Elsewhere, the Cannes film festival organisers – somehow able to stem their Gallic tears at news that production on Schwarzenegger's nuanced new movie, Cry Macho, has been halted – have made director Lars von Trier "persona non grata" for a duff Nazi joke. Conversely, our own limits of free speech have been expanded. We can now speak not-entirely-freely about Sir Fred Goodwin – a rich and powerful man, a bit like Strauss-Kahn – shagging one of his staff; a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who drove his wife to the end of her tether, a bit like Chris Huhne, and so on.
And so on, indeed, until it's clear there is a vast tear in the news continuum, causing all stories to collapse into one another. Any minute now that chap from Wrexham will attempt to lead his pony into the Manhattan apartment in which Strauss-Kahn is under house arrest. The moment the pony is pressed for its views on date rape will officially mark the end of not just the news cycle, but the world. Call 1-800-GIVEGODALLMYMONEY now.
When you've done that, let's return to the Ladybird guide to moral relativism. We've had the French justice minister deriding "brutality" – she's talking about the handcuffing of Strauss-Kahn, obviously – while Von Trier's crap Hitler ramble has been discussed as though it were made before a neo-Nazi rally, as opposed to some hacks in need of a story to justify next year's fortnight on the Croisette.
Still, Cannes has taken a stand, clawing something back against America's apparent belief that the moral high ground it has wrested from the French is a territory so large it would dwarf the Louisiana purchase. Yet according to a poll, 60% of French people believe the Strauss-Kahn allegations to be a conspiracy. Unwilling to resist the chance to patronise, perhaps in return for generations of sniffy restaurant service, corners of the American press have seized on the pollster's observation that "the French are in denial over the scandal". Whether France cares to take a reality check from the land of the birthers remains to be seen – but the signs aren't great.
"The question of what is wrong with Strauss-Kahn," mused a chap from the French International Relations Institute, "has almost been replaced by what is wrong with the United States." I think we were being encouraged to imagine him saying this while wearing a black polo neck and sitting in a cloud of Gauloise smoke.
Where Strauss-Kahn sits on the spectrum that runs from handsy to rapist is – quaintly – a matter for the courts, but the pious suggestion that a "chaud lapin" could not reach high office in the US seems vaguely ill-timed. The hottest of rabbits could certainly become governor of California, for instance, even if multiple women had publicly denounced his behaviour.
It's all desperately confusing, isn't it? I suppose we must yet again observe that the boundaries between public and private aren't half as easy to draw as self-interested parties from the British press to the French justice minister are making out. On the plus side, moral cartography is the western economy's most exciting growth sector – possibly its only one, thanks to the likes of Sir Fred – and if you could buy shares in high court judging and jingoistic punditry, I'd advise you to forget Glencore and pile in.
Meanwhile, do let's dispense with the notion that the week in news will prompt lasting cultural soul-searching on any side. The players are entrenched in almost entirely self-justifying positions. The French are being French, the Americans are being American, and Britain is standing full square behind whoever supports our right to tell people what a footballer did in a hotel room.
I can't bear the thought of all this human potential being snuffed out at 6pm – and all before we know the denouement of the Chris Huhne speeding points saga. How could a benign God permit Judgment Day (the apocalypse, not the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie)? Perhaps those who get the chance to ask him in person would care to relay the answer to those of us damned to eternity in the Other Place.