“Smart Diplomacy” apparently means “represent your country abroad with egomaniacal empty skirts who gave you lots of money“:
The commander in chief is mulling whether to appoint Wintour, one of his biggest reelection campaign fundraising bundlers, as ambassador to the United Kingdom or France, according to Bloomberg News’s Hans Nichols.
(Facepalm)
Why not Bengazi, I hear there is an opening.
Appointing an Ambassador who ..”who gave you lots of money“. As if that’s never been done before….
I’ll agree with Emery, and the Talking Heads, here: Same as it ever was.
Appointing an Ambassador who ..”who gave you lots of money“. As if that’s never been done before….
Right, but that’s not entirely the issue here. It’s not unreasonable to expect a would-be diplomat to be a little more (ahem) diplomatic than la Wintour has proven to be over the course of her career.
There’s also the issue that the U.K. and France are pretty important countries. I think most people would have less of an objection to this if the proposal was to post Wintour to someplace like, say, Malta, or the Seychelles.
What could possibly go wrong in hiring an ambassador whose only political experience is throwing rhetorical firebombs? It’s not like undiplomatic diplomats have ever led to a needless war or anything, is it?
Oh.
Is that commie witch even a citizen or is she rolling on a green card? And, Emery, among the other lies that he told to his drooling sycophants, the Dear Leader said that he would eliminate business as usual in D.C. so why is it that he continually gets passes on those lies? But, hey, it’s easier to play the blame game and say; “Well, everyone else did it, so…”
Agree with Mr D…..its one thing to put a financial supporter in to a diplomatic position is the person is at least somewhat qualified. But it is quite different to put a possibly psychological unbalance tyrannt in one of the most important posts we have.
Well, it’s not as if the Brits had any expectations of seriousness after the last four years.
I don’t understand the UK or France part when we know there’s an immediate opening for an Ambassador to Libya.
Scott, that was what Mitt was discussing with Obamma the other day.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal wrote of Wintour yesterday:
“This seems as good a time as any to mention the Walter Duranty Awards, a brand-new journalism prize for whose inaugural dinner in October this columnist served as master of ceremonies. Winning first prize, edging out CBS’s Bob Simon and What’s Left of Newsweek’s Andrew Sullivan, were Anna Wintour of Vogue and writer Joan Buck, for a March 2011 cover story titled “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert.”
Claudia Rosett, who presented the award, summed up the article:
Ms. Buck, for whom Vogue obtained extraordinary access to the Assads, gushed about Asma as “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies . . . breezy, conspiratorial, and fun . . . a thin long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement.” Ms. Buck treated her readers to visions of Asma waking at dawn to begin her charitable rounds, including her campaign urging millions of young Syrians to engage in “active citizenship.” There were vignettes of Asma flying around Syria in a French-built corporate jet, or careening through traffic behind the wheel of a plain SUV, en route to museums, schools, and orphanages, a study in “energetic grace,” deftly accessorized with little more than a necklace of Chanel agates; shoes and Syrian silk tote bag by French designer Christian Louboutin.
You can read the whole piece at PresidentAssad.net, but it is gone from Vogue’s website. Further investigation suggested there was a dark side to the Assad family’s activities.
Anna Wintour stands for Vogue values.
This past June, Wintour published an “Editor’s Note” with the results of this investigation: “Subsequent to our interview, as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue. The escalating atrocities in Syria are unconscionable, and we deplore the actions of the Assad regime in the strongest possible terms.”
Wintour was in the news this year when she hosted fundraising dinners for President Obama in New York, London and Paris. As a result, Thomas Pascoe of Britain’s Daily Telegraph writes (albeit citing “speculative reports”), “Wintour is in the running to be America’s next ambassador to either Britain or France.” Why not New York? Because it’s a domestic city, so there’s no U.S. ambassador to New York. But there’s an ambassador in New York, to the United Nations. Why couldn’t Wintour replace Susan Rice? Nah, forget it. We don’t want to give them ideas.
OK, maybe one idea. How about nominating Wintour ambassador to Damascus? What a great opportunity that would be to promote the values of Vogue in a country that clearly needs them.”
Comedy Gold.