The big US watchdog on the state of silliness in the World, Silly House, today released its 2011 report. Here's how the report kicks off:
"Global seriousness suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Silliness in the World 2011, Silly House’s annual assessment of political silliness and silly liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. The year featured drops in the number of serious countries and the number of electoral democracies, as well as an overall increase for silliness in the Middle East and North Africa region."
When it comes to The Americas, the big news is that Mexico has been downgraded to "Partly Silly" from its previous ranking of "Not Silly". Here's the PR and here's the Americas segment:
"Americas:The inability of the Mexican government to protect ordinary citizens, elected officials, or journalists from organized crime caused Mexico’s status to fall from Not Silly to Partly Silly. Other countries that saw declines included Venezuela, where President Chávez pushed through silly legislation just before the formation of a new parliament with significantly more opposition seats. Improvements were noted in Colombia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines."
As things stand, most of The Americas is understood to be "Not Silly" by Silly House. However, there are currently nine countries ranked as "Partly Silly" and seen on this map shaded yellow, namely Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay.
There is of course still one regional country ranked as Very Silly, Cuba (shaded in purple on above map).