Thus far, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made two diplomatic blunders during her visit to Mexico that the U.S. Old Media are shockingly uninterested in highlighting. One was a policy blunder and the other a cultural/religious one.
Clinton’s first mistake was in imagining she is still a Senator that can make pronouncements on pending laws and policy plans instead of a mere envoy of the president, a mouth piece that hasn’t the same freedom to invent policy prescriptions and laws that a Senator does. Last week, Clinton told Mexican officials that “we” — as in the U.S. government — are considering re-upping the so-called assault rifle ban because Mexico’s drug violence is “our” fault.
When asked on March 27 about plans to return to the 1994 law banning “assault weapons” (a vague and illegitimate term at best), Obama’s press secretary replied that he was unaware of “any plans” to reinstitute the ban.
Clinton obviously spoke out of turn making promises to Mexican officials that she was not authorized to make.
“Who painted it?”
The second Clinton gaffe concerned her abstruse question at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Thursday, March 26. Her question showed that Clinton was woefully uninformed about the most important feature of the church, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe enshrined there since 1531.
Catholic tradition holds that the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on a cloak belonging to Saint Juan Diego in 1531. As Monsignor Diego Monroy brought Clinton before the shrine, Clinton asked her blundering question.
After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”
Now, perhaps Clinton being so woefully ignorant of anything religious isn’t such a surprise, but for a Secretary of State to be visiting one of the most famous and important churches in the region, one holding a much beloved religious relic, without even finding her staff informing her “who painted” the image reveals a shocking lack by professionalism of both the Secretary of State and her staff.
Add this to the “button gaffe” of March 7 where Clinton’s staff failed to find out how to spell a simple word in Russian and we are seeing a Secretary of State failing in the simplest of tasks making a mockery of our “diplomatic” outreach.
Sadly, the Old Media is letting her off the hook with aplomb.
(Photo credit: Estrella/Getty – New York Daily News)
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
Dan McLaughlin
Neil Stevens
Daniel Horowitz
In a similar vein
bk (Diary) Monday, March 30th at 6:25AM EST (link)If Biden’s daughter does turn out to be a cokehead, we can expect the MSM will ignore it out of respect for her privacy, whereas it was major news when Bush’s daughter committed the awful crime of trying to buy a margarita when she was a college freshman.
This is a disgrace
franklinslocke Monday, March 30th at 8:55AM EST (link)I don’t know if this is incompetence or hubris. Either one gives us the same results, horrible diplomacy and relations. Our Allies are looking at us and laughing. Our enemies are salivating. The Obama administrating is failing at the most dangerous time our history.
http://franklinslocke.blogspot.com/
Next stop: Mecca
pithnvinegar Monday, March 30th at 9:02AM EST (link)“Nice church ya got here. Say, what’s under the big curtain?”
PS I know, no non-Muslims allowed near Mecca or Medina. More tolerance from our friends from our friends of the ROP.
It's still hard to believe
mom2oneson (Diary) Monday, March 30th at 9:12AM EST (link)that it is her there! She hates femininity and promotes abortion.
What an ignorant post
troosevelt Friday, April 3rd at 12:49AM EST (link)HA HA HA! That is all you have to complain about? An assault weapons ban comment and some forgettable question about Our Lady of Guadalupe? The MSM didn’t cover this because it is stupid. Plus she didn’t say that drug violence in Mexico is America’s fault, she said the United States acknowledges that our appetite for drugs is part of the problem. This is objectively true. But for demand for drugs in the US there would not be the same level of drug violence in cities like Juarez.
As for the “simple translation” of the word RESET into Russian, tell me, what is it in the proper context? Is a reset button a noun? Or, should it be translated as a verb (i.e. “reset” the relationship)? Here are some choices which can mean “reset” depending on the context of the sentence in Russian. Which do you think is best?
noun
1. ????????? ?????????
2. ????????? ????? [??????.]
3. ?????????????? ?????????, ???????? ???????? ?????????? ?????
4. ??????? ? ???????? ?????????
5. ?????????????? ???????????
6. ??????????????
7. ???????
8. ?????
9. ????????? ? ???????? ?????????
verb
1. ????? ????????????? [???.]
2. ????? ????????? ? ??????
3. ????????? [???.]
4. ???????? ?????? [??????.]
5. ???????? ????????
6. ???????? ?????????, ??????? ???????? ?????????? ?????
7. ?????????????????
8. ???????? ???????????
And just so you don’t think Russian is unique, German is also rather complicated. You can express the word “reset” in the following ways. Again, depending on context:
1. neu einfassen
2. umsetzen
3. neu fassen
4. neu stellen
5. zurückstellen
6. einrichten
7. wieder einrenken
8. neu setzen
9. rücksetzen
You ignorance and tunnel vision betray you for the whiner that you are.
No Cyrillic eh?
troosevelt Friday, April 3rd at 12:53AM EST (link)Oh well, nevertheless, 17 possible ways to say reset is sufficiently complicated without showing the actual Russian words. Hey, is Redstate.com censoring? Is it a conspiracy?? Afraid of objective evidence??