Today President Obama welcomes Hu Jintao, the president of China. Mr. Hu will be feted with pomp and circumstance, including the highest honor that official American hospitality can provide: a state dinner at the White House.
In other words, today the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is entertaining, with full state honors, the head of a police state that currently holds the 2010 Peace Laureate in its gulag for daring to express his opinion.
Makes you proud, doesn’t it?
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I don’t see anything here that should inspire either pride or shame. Sitting down with nasties in the hope that you might influence them to be a bit less nasty is what realpolitik is all about. And if recent public statements by prominent politicos are any indication, Hu can expect some pointed criticism in the next days.
I have absolutely zero expectation that anything said or done here will in any effective way influence Hu to be “a bit less nasty”.
But then again, I guess it’s all about “hope”.
SNL knows how it will go.
“I like to have my neck bitten when someone is doing sex to me…”
http://www.hulu.com/watch/193066/saturday-night-live-g-20-cold-open
“…, I guess it’s all about ‘hope’.”
Not “all”, Malcolm. Some of it is about “dope”, as in “hopey-dopey”.
Well, I for one hope Uncle Hu didn’t forget his billfold. We’ve got Birthday presents to buy for a bunch of people in other parts of the world.