Smart Diplomacy

Post by **L Day** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:43 pm

GENEVAâ€”Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened her first extended talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by giving him a present meant to symbolize the Obama administrationâ€™s vow to â€œpress the reset buttonâ€

Post by **Shamis** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:53 pm

It is kind of hard to find a good russian translator, but I'd assume secretary of state would have access to such things.

Post by **Izzy** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:57 pm

How many stories do you think the mainstream media will do on this? One, maybe, on Fox is my guess.

Post by **bcombs** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:26 am

Funny how this article reads totally different: http://www.reuters.com/article/gc07/idU ... 2420090306

Post by **ynot** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:16 am

Izzy wrote:How many stories do you think the mainstream media will do on this? One, maybe, on Fox is my guess.

It's all over the media

Post by **Izzy** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:36 am

It's all over the media[/quote]

Really? Are you sure? Because I've heard all kinds of press on this meeting, but nothing on the linguistic blunder. Maybe I just missed that part. My apologies.

Post by **tbwilsonky** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 1:53 am

lol. man the obama administration is totally full of newbs when it comes to the uber-important field of 'gift wrapping'.

/yawn. if i'm going to be constantly bombarded with infantile critiques from the right can they at least play off of meaningless tropes garnered from truck commercials? please? is this too much to ask?

t

Post by **Xtant** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 2:06 am

Sooooo...what happens when she presents Ahmadinejad with a gift emblazoned with the word Penis in Arabic instead of Peace?

Infantile critiques? What's good for the goose is damn sure good for the gander. How many "nucular" jokes were there? Constant images of Bush being compared with a monkey? For every serious complaint about Bush, there were ten that were just petty. The only Bush "blunder" I recall when it comes translators was when the french translator was stuck in traffic or something so Bush conducted the talks completely in fluent French instead of waiting. Now THAT was embarrassing...a POTUS speaking anything fluently besides English

This, at least, was a blunder that could have had irreparable damage depending for whom the gift was offered.

Post by **tbwilsonky** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:30 pm

it was infantile when the left did it as well. "bush looks like a monkey" has about as much to do with useful political discourse as discussing Brittany Spear's drug habit(s).

but i like your reasoning here: "if people can waste their energy on irrelevant critiques against Bush, then it's okay if they do the same against Obama". in other words, if everyone is acting like a child then nobody is acting like a child.

nice work.

-t

Post by **L Day** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:35 pm

Dude, lighten up. We're just having a little fun with the administration's "Smart Diplomacy". Something tells me there's plenty more where the OVERCHARGE button came from. Apparently, the Russian media is in stiches.