But at Least He Knows How Many Provinces His Own Country Has?
Lech Kaczynski, the President of Poland, appears to be a gaffe machine on par with Joe Biden. His greatest hits include showing up late for a meeting with Condoleezza Rice, snubbing Lech Walesa and claiming President-elect Obama had given him assurances he apparently hadn’t. Nice.
Meanwhile, their foreign minister Radek Sikorski denies having made a joke that Barack Obama’s grandfather ate a Polish sausage missionary. Technically, Mr. Sikorski doesn’t deny having made the comment; however, his spokesholes insist it was really just a meta-joke, not a joke in its own right.
There’s a dumb Polack joke in there somewhere.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:46 am
claiming President-elect Obama had given him assurances he apparently hadn’t
Either that, or Obama is the one making phony assurances and then backtracking.
Who should we trust? I place just about zero faith in Barack Obama, given how many contradictory campaign promises he made. His strategy is to tell everyone what they want to hear. Why should we think he did anything different with the Poles?
November 20th, 2008 at 7:31 am
That is a possibility, which is why I couched the statement with “apparently.” If it had been Kaczynski only gaffe, I’d be have been more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. The thing is, Obama’s strategy of telling everyone what they want to hear doesn’t usually entail lying out right. Most of the time he just gives nice-sounding, content-free speeches about change as an undefined variable, which each listener is then invited to audaciously hope will turn out to be the kind of change he personally can believe in. The smart money says Obama did the same thing to Kacyznski, who in turn heard what he wanted to hear (something) rather than what Obama had actually said (nothing).
November 20th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Polish insult:
“Hey, Stosh. My mother wears combat boots.”
November 21st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I was horrified to discover that “polaco” is really how you say “Polish” in Spanish.
*Sigh* I miss Polack jokes, and I’m Polish!
tgirsch´s last blog post..The Bush Legacy