US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, right, is all smile with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after presenting him a device with a red knob during their meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 6, 2009. Clinton said Friday she hopes her first discussion with her Russian counterpart will begin a new era in U.S.-Russian relations without raising doubts about American support for European allies. (AP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini, Pool)
OK, now, THAT's more like it! Was it just yesterday that I was bemoaning Hillary Clinton's lack of cutesy media awareness? This shows promise. Team Hillary actually manufactures props! Condi never worked with props, unless you count her spherical, invisible friend or, of course, the biggest prop of them all, Condi herself.
But anyway, just look at that! A cute red reset button with an amusingly mistranslated message! I like it:
And then it hit me: that's no prop! I believe that what we're seeing above is the actual, real reset button from the Disneytronic, Animagic Condibot, the labor-saving robot sent out by yesterday's State Department when the real Condi was getting her hair and nails done. I bet it was originally set into the Condibot's hairdo somewhere. So this is actually a richly symbolic, darkly hilarious gesture from Clinton: The Condibot has been dismantled, never to walk or to recite talking points again. With this in mind, couldn't the Russian mistranslation be intentional, a final stab at Condi's notoriously overstated Russian "expertise?"
I like to think so. OMG, diplomacy is totally so much fun again! Yay!
14 comments:
Doesn't ПЕРЕГРУЗКА mean 'overload'?
The actual word is pereZAgruzka (перезагрузка), at least that is how Russian Windows translates it.
Interestingly, Russian has half a dozen verbs for restarting/resetting/switching things, but does not distinguish between a "knob" a "button."
Also, when I first read this word I kept hearing a female voice saying "peregruzka" over and over in my head. I finally realized that it is part of the error message I heard 20-30 times whenever I wanted to make a phone call in Turkmenistan: "Your call cannot be completed now because the line is overloaded. Please call back in a few minutes."
I'm sure there is a meaningful analogy somewhere in all this.
"A device with a red knob"?
The caption writer couldn't explain?
No matter what great fodder we get photographically for Hill, (whew she looks infinitely less scary in her black power pantsuit), it still scares the hell out of me that Hill is the SoS.
So what is with the "special envoy" sent to Afghanistan & Pakistan? Team Obama not willing to let Hill handle the important stuff?
In the top photo, doesn't it look like Hill's is leaning back a little, just in case the damn thing might go off?!?
Excuse my aging eyes, but does not the sleazy Mr Lavrov look like the equally sleazy Mr Steele? Perhaps Our Visual Majesty PSP can enlighten us on this "separated at birth" phenomenon ...
You know? I hate to be this shallow, but will someone PLEASE direct Hills to a teeth whitening solution? Thank you.
Feeling in a cheerful mood in these awful depression days, let me say that at least it's not meant to be a button to start a nuclear war, although that could have been the subliminal intent.
Nuclear war? Would it jump-start the economy?
God, diplomacy is full of tacky gestures, isn't it? I never realized that until I became a Pony Pal.
Thanks, I think...
For me, this has the "two steps forward, one step back" feeling that I'm getting about the first few weeks of the Obama administration in general. Don't get me wrong, it's much better for my blood pressure than the last eight years, but some of the stuff is just not quite right.
I'd be happy to take the appointment as assistant undersecretary for gag gifts. I promise no awkward mistakes.
I think the joke's really on us. Have you noticed which finger Lavrov is using to press the button?
I'm sorry to say that Hill isn't as easy breezy beautiful as Ursula. Way better than Condi, but still missing something
"We" don't like our diplomadams to be diplobabes.
For that you have to go to Europe.
Hey, the Russkis are noted for their goofy-ass, slapstick senses of humor.
Hillary obviously was greasing the wheels with her poorly translated, big red button.
Condi never would have given this guy a gag gift like this- she would have thought she was giving him permission to blow something up.
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