To suggest that most Americans simply do not give a hoot about the UN is to overstate our attention to the international body that has collected six Nobel Peace prizes in its 50-year history and is headquartered in the middle of Manhattan.

To be fair, New Yorkers do pay serious mind to the UN: the streets around that tall glass building on the East Side can be the source of bearish midday traffic, so it is to be avoided.

But the UN itself is peopled by, and largely concerned with, strangers who may not speak English, often do not have their own Internet website, and may, in some cases, not even know who Calvin Klein is. They are foreigners, the people of that building, and at this particularly isolationist cultural juncture, Americans are not infatuated with issues and politics beyond their shores.

The media organisations know this, or at least have decided this is the case. Most newspapers and TV networks are closing down their foreign news bureaus. (When a plane crashed in South America last year, news organisations scrambled for days because none of them had a full-time reporter on the sub-continent.) At the same time, they are increasing coverage of celebrities and entertainment.

So into this new reality comes UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on a pilgrimage. (The name alone leads one Hollywood cappuccino- aficionado to wonder aloud: "Is that something you have with steamed milk?") Keenly aware that the financial survival of the UN is at stake, and astute in the recognition that he is no match for Leonardo DiCaprio even though, yes, he did successfully negotiate with Saddam Hussein and avoid a war, Mr Annan arrived in California this week on a shopping spree. The quest? Celebrities, film producers and sports stars.

He hustled and cajoled and persuaded. In a speech in San Francisco he chided US politicians who charge that the UN is nothing more than a costly, inefficient and largely irrelevant bureaucracy. "Five times as many people work for McDonalds as work for the UN. UN staff has been cut by 25 per cent in the last year," he said.

Taking an unusual position in a political environment which can commodify almost anything, including human rights, Mr Annan argued that a price cannot be put on world peace and security. He spoke of UN history, of deforestation and smallpox, genocide and famine.

Declaring that the UN is "technically bankrupt" and at the mercy of creditors, he called on the US to pay the $1.5 billion it owes. So far , conservatives in Congress have succeeded in delaying payment of the debt.

Then it was on to Los Angeles and the Beverly Hilton Hotel. At a reception there, Mr Annan made his pitch to celebrities to get involved with the UN, to lend their names and faces to support and publicise it. His pitch found a receptive audience. Actor James Woods told him that he had made the UN relevant again. Actress Jacqueline Bisset pointedly asked how she could help. Tony Curtis listened.

Next on the list was Greenacres, a Beverly Hills restaurant, and more chats. The UN Secretary-General talked with actors Robert Stack and Michael York and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. He signed up opera star Luciano Pavarotti to promote the UN during concerts. He named basketball star Magic Johnson as a "peace messenger" who will film television announcements about drug abuse. He asked rock stars to participate in a globally televised pop concert in December to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Like a Hollywood agent, Mr Annan even met producers to ask them to make a film about UN workers. His pitch to producers, he told the Los Angeles Times, went like this:

"Every day, men and women leave their families behind and go off to make a difference in the lives of strangers in Bosnia or stand guard on the border of Iraq and Kuwait."

Sounds pretty good. Starring, say, Leonardo DiCaprio?

Although they did not know his name, many tourists in hotel lobbies and on the street recognised Mr Annan as the man who went to Baghdad.

For a man trying to get much needed attention for his organisation, he did everything right. But therein lies the irony. The American media barely covered his trip. Not a mention of it occurred in the New York Times. USA Today was also silent the next day, with its front page trumpeting "McCartney's Last Words to Linda". Time and Newsweek did not notice. The Los Angeles Times wrote a story on its local news page. The television punditocracy was silent.

A man who thwarted tyrants and averted wars used to be a hero, or at least famous. No more. Now if only Mr Annan had been able to meet Monica Lewinsky . . .