Confusing Message at the ROM's Mesopotamia Exhibit

Yesterday I took my son to see the Mesopotamia show at the Royal Ontario Museum. We both found it interesting, informative, and well-designed. I especially enjoyed the way Assyrian friezes were brought to life via animation on top of the frieze. And the giant screen featuring computer graphics allowing you to feel as though you were walking the streets of Babylon and looking out from the top of the ziggurat--outstanding!

One quibble: the exhibit seemed to harp on the idea of "globalization," and, frankly, I couldn't understand why that was. At one point you come across a screen with Tony Burman, identified as "former Managing Director of Al Jazeera English," trying to explain it to you. But after listening to a blowsy-looking Burman (I know the adjective is usually reserved for chicks, but, trust me, that's how he looked) uttering some inanities about how "globalization" is a wonderful thing unless it becomes "politicized," I still didn't get it.

The other thing I didn't get--why was Tony (a notorious blowhard and Zion-loather) there at all? Was it a sly way of publicizing the sort of "globalization" represented by Al Jazeera and those who back it?

Or am I reading too much into it?


"Blowsy" Burman--see him promoting "globalization" (but what kind?) at the ROM

Update: The globalization thing is explained (sort of; not really) here:

Connections to the present are inescapable throughout the exhibit. In one instance, visitors are greeted with two tablets, one clay (the height of written technology circa 2300 BCE), one electronic. While the artifacts are primarily organized by region (Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon), subdivisions compare ancient and modern notions of concepts ranging from globalization to justice.

If that's what it was doing--comparing ancient and modern notions re "globalization," I don't think it was done very well. And that's probably because "globalization" isn't an ancient concept at all. (Conquest: yes; empire: yes; "globalization": I think not.) It's a modern construct which, for unknown reasons, is being highlighted in this exhibit and which, in such a context, becomes an anachronism (you know, like Heston in Ben Hur wearing a wristwatch which, as it turns out, is also a myth).