I don't know if you're aware of this, but at our present step in the strange march of history, only one man – one frail, fallible man – stands between western civilisation and fiery, doomy, exploding death. It's not Barack Obama or George W Bush or Uncle Sam or the ghost of Sir Winston Churchill's most esteemed jowls or whatever. Nope.

That man?

It's, uh, David Schwimmer. Ross from Friends. He's our guy.

As the Guardian reported on Wednesday, according to a secret cable recently released by WikiLeaks:

"Satellite broadcasts of the US TV shows Desperate Housewives and The Late Show With David Letterman are doing more to persuade Saudi youth to reject violent jihad than hundreds of millions of dollars of US government propaganda, informants have told the American embassy in Jeddah … Diplomats said they believed the allure of actors such as Eva Longoria, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer meant commercial TV had a far greater impact than al-Hurra which, according to one report, has cost US taxpayers up to $500m (£316m)."

So, to be more specific, we owe our safety and eternal gratitude to: (1) that time when Ross and Joey take a nap on the roof and (classic Ross!) get locked out, causing high jinks to ensue for 22 flawlessly formulaic American minutes; and (2) whoever invented satellites and stuck them up in space to do our bidding (I think that'd be Russia, which is ironic in some way that I'm too lazy to unpack). To be even more specific, the US government has spent at least half a billion dollars to create and pump pro-American propaganda into the Middle East, and absolutely nobody cares. BECAUSE SSSSHHH! THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ORANGE COUNTY IS ON.

A couple of thoughts here. First of all, I'm fascinated by the idea that American mass media is successfully persuading Saudi teenagers NOT to become jihadists, because it's had the exact opposite effect on me. After a lifetime of watching romantic comedies in which Mel Gibson telepathically manipulates women into having intercourse with him, and reality television shows in which Bobby Brown manually stimulates Whitney Houston's constipated anus (true story! You're welcome!), I currently devote my entire being to waging a one-woman holy war on terrible American mass media. It is literally my job. Bobby Brown made me a jihadist. Jerk.

Second thought: Hey, US government. Bang-up job on healthcare reform, and the whole freedom of the press thingy, and equal rights for gay people, and, you know, these couple of big unwieldy wars we're working on, but can you do ANYTHING right? At all? I don't know what this customised Saudi propaganda programme looks like, but I imagine it's something akin to your dad trying to "relate" to you by talking about how "Jay-Z is the new Shakespeare", which he knows all about because he heard it on public radio, "homie". Inauthenticity stinks, because it's bullshit. And nobody smells bullshit better than young people, Saudi or otherwise.

When I was growing up in Seattle, at the height of the "war on drugs" (ha!), most children in American schools were required to endure "Dare" training – or Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Once a week, a police officer would come to our classroom and show us photographs of, say, a dirty dead lung, and shout, "Do you like this? Do you think this dirty dead lung is cool? Well, you might as well kill yourselves now because this lung is YOU if you ever so much as wink at a marijuana cigarette, you tiny degenerates!" As a result, every single child in America dashed out to do drugs as soon as humanly possible. Dare did not work, because it was bullshit. Obvious bullshit. You know what actually convinced me to stay away from drugs? Lindsay Lohan. Real talk.

Finally, I find it interesting that American far-right conservatives – a group deeply invested in violent cultural imperialism, in bombing sandy countries into loving us – are also the group most invested in America's current culture wars. They hate decadent Hollywood liberalism almost as much as they hate brown guys in funny hats. What did Ann Coulter say? That we need to invade Muslim countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity? Well, Ann, it appears that George Clooney, beaming his "Bolshevik bluster" into the Middle East from Hollywood (via satellite – double Bolshevik!), happens to be the best weapon you've got in this fight, so you might want to pick a side.

Sigh. No one told me life was going to be this way.