Wednesday, November 16, 2005

From The New Republic:

After her widely ridiculed "listening tour" of the Middle East you would have thought that public diplomacy czar Karen Hughes learned a thing or two. But there she was in Indonesia last week, on the next leg of her campaign to improve America's image in the Muslim world, making the same mistakes all over again. There were the same patronizing and vacuous statements: "My state of Texas is very big," she told students at an elite Jakarta university. "So you can imagine my surprise to learn that your country, Indonesia, is three time bigger than my big state of Texas."

Cp.:

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

At one point, da Silva even exhibited a map of his country, which is larger than the continental United States. "Wow! Brazil is big," Amorim quoted the U.S. president as responding.

I think these comments are very revealing.

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