Which Foreign Dignitaries Did Sarah Palin Actually Meet?
Sarah Palin increased her foreign policy experience by 475% today and the media wasn't allowed to hear any of it! Because Sarah Palin doesn't really speak to the media much/ever, so they have to follow her around and ask the photographers dispatched to capture the photo ops what they heard her say, as if she is just like her new pal Henry Kissinger and she is engaging in top-secret high-level diplomatic negotiations. Except… at the end of the meetings the ensuing media accounts don't have anything to write about, because nothing actually transpired, so the poor journalists are left to write about how she lipsynched that she "had a good time" meeting the emperor of Tokyo or whatever. So what's a bigger waste of time than following Sarah Palin around while she says nothing about meaningless meetings with foreign dignitaries? Making up fictional event-free meetings with foreign dignitaries for the sake of a pointless quiz to see if you can tell which ones actually (pointlessly) happened!Three of these meetings actually happened, according to the Times website. Three just happened the way I imagined they would were I a reporter assigned to watch various other foreign dignitaries harmlessly shaking hands and exchanging niceties with Sarah Palin before being ushered off to exchange more niceties and possibly a game recipe or two. Guess which is which! 1. Talking Georgia With Kissinger
Gov. Sarah Palin wrapped her first day of motorcade diplomacy with a 90-minute meeting with Henry Kissinger, where they spoke about Georgia. Ms. Palin and Mr. Kissinger sat on blue couches, separated by an end table with photographs of President Nixon and President Reagan on it. As photographers were led in, Mr. Kissinger could be heard saying that he gave someone “a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia,” according to a reporter who was allowed to watch. “Good, good,’’ Ms. Palin said. “And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.” The photographers were ushered out. When Ms. Palin emerged from the building, a news producer asked her how it went, and she mouthed the words, “It was great.”
2. Palin meets her old "Sister" Mayor.
One familiar face in what would be a long string of otherwise new acquaintances was Sergey Alexandrov, the mayor of Mirny, a town of about 40,000 in Russia's mineral-rich far east that is Wasilla's partner in the international "citizen diplomacy" network program Sister Cities International. A McCain staffer told a reporter had visited Alaska in 1998 or 1999. A tall, ruddy man who appears to be in his mid-fifties, Mr. Alexandrov greeted Ms. Palin with a small bow and a handshake, then made a hand gesture that was an apparent comment on the vice presidential nominee's height. Ms. Palin pointed to the heel of her black pump. A staffer said the pair had engaged in a "spirited" debate following Mr. Kissinger's remarks.
3. Palin and Karzai Bond Over Children
When Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon, the polite preliminaries to their conversation centered around children, as Mr. Karzai spoke of the birth of his first child last year. “What is his name?” Ms. Palin was heard to ask, as she met with Mr. Karzai in the suite of a midtown hotel, according to a pool report. “Mirwais,” Mr. Karzai replied. “Mirwais, which means, ‘The Light of the House.’” “Oh nice,” Palin responded. “He is the only one we have,” Mr. Karzai said.
4. Palin and Sundaravej talk cooks and cuisine.
For lunch, a security detail whisked Ms. Palin to her next appointment at the Royal Thai Consulate, where she was slated to dine over a briefing on a recent Thai-South Korean trade dispute from former prime minister Samak Sundaravej. The two entered a dining room through an entrance flanked by gold Bhudda statues and sat at a table set with meat skewers and spring rolls. "Did you cook all this yourself?" Ms. Palin asked Mr. Sundaravej, according to a photographer, who said the former prime minister explained that the embassy retained a cook on staff for such events. Ms. Palin jotted notes in a spiral steno pad.
5. Meeting Uribe
The next stop on Governor Palin’s whirlwind diplomatic tour was a meeting with President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. Mr. Uribe has a warm relationship with Senator John McCain, who paid him a visit during extremely unusual campaign trip to Colombia over the summer where he expressed support for a free trade agreement. The meeting was held in the residence of the Colombian Mission on the Upper East Side in an ornate room with a pink stuffed chair and a chandelier, according to an account provided by the reporter allowed to accompany her into the event, Ms. Palin was overheard telling Mr. Uribe, “Thank you for your work.’’ Then the motorcade left for a sit-down at Kissinger Associates.
6. A Visitor Ponders The Implications Of A Palin Vice-Presidency
A reporter stationed at another side of the Kissinger Associates building saw Kissinger briefly emerge from a back exit to heartily greet a tall slim man of apparent Arab descent. Mr. Kissinger was overheard wishing the man a happy birthday before apologizing that a surprise guest would be "keeping me all day." "Like your father, only I am allowed to go to the bathroom," Mr. Kissinger told the guest. "A woman then!" the man replied. "Let me meet her!" Mr. Kissinger paused. "Well, you two are about the same age, but she you would never know," he said with a faint chuckle. "Her youth is — in many respects — quite well-preserved." "Inshallah," the man muttered in response. "Leave it to you, Henry. The one thing Bibi and I agree about…well let's just say this false Jew 'Levi' is on both our do-not-fly lists!" "Well, you know what I say: even the paranoid have real enemies. And if the enemy of your enemy is your friend…" "Fuck you."