Prince Potemkin Lives!

The expression "Potemkin", as in Potemkin village or landscape or such - meaning essentially a facade of well-being hiding a slum - and not as in Battleship Potemkin, for example, is undergoing a revival. I first came across the expression in the 1950's and can't say that I ever heard it - except from my own lips - until very recently. I just had a post on Olympics China with Potemkinisms.

Now the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121979742566674947.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Obama Should Find His Inner Kansan  
August 27, 2008

  ...On Sunday, as those police sent me on the first of several long, pointless trudges around the perimeter of Denver's heavily fortified Pepsi Center, a foreign journalist summarized convention proceedings to me as a "Potemkin village of democracy."

I am not sure "Potemkin village" is what was called for here. Perhaps a charade, a pantomime, a Busby Berkely spectacle of democracy. Potemkin village sort of indicates that there is a show of democracy up front, and a ghetto of democracy behind the facade. I mean, that's a lot from a foreign guy! Anyhow, if I know anything...I think I recall that Prince Potemkin served Catherine the Great. I also know the whole story of the derivation of the expression "Potemkin village". I shall save it for a rainy day.