but “in” always made more sense. that is where they did it, right?

76 · Nayagan said

Chachaji,

since you’re sifting through the fine details here, how long did these meetings last?

Nayagan, since you’re willing to grant that there might be a reality other than the one you and other commenters perceived through that video clip – or at least, I think you seem to, based on your comment – then really, all else is moot. Let’s just go forth and say, this is how it looks to me, so this is how it must have been.

-how does a brown person blush? I guess i just don’t get his meta-meta-humor. I will admit my extreme dislike for scions of political dynasties/tribes spilled over onto zardari. anyhow, i do understand what you are saying and did not expect him to bring her a corset wrapped in a bow.

Chachaji, since you’re sifting through the fine details here, how long did these meetings last?

Nayagan, since you’re willing to grant that there might be a reality other than the one you and other commenters perceived through that video clip – or at least, I think you seem to, based on your comment – then really, all else is moot. Let’s just go forth and say, this is how it looks to me, so this is how it must have been.

Still, since you asked a question: I believe it was a half-hour meeting. And to keep this comment interesting, of course, Zardari could have done anything. He could, for example, have pretended he was meeting a lady dropping in from Victorian England, and greeted her with a slight bow, delicately taking her fingers in his, as if she were a delicate piece of china. No handshake that. Which is what Manmohan Singh pretty much did. And he needn’t have said anything whatever. Or he could have mumbled something while blushing for all the world to see. Then the media and the chatterati could have fun asking whether his lips actually moved during the interaction. (With Manmohan Singh, this is exactly what they did.)

But Zardari’s is an effusive personality. You should have seen him rushing off to the Visitor’s Gallery to hug Nawaz Sharif, his political archrival and on-again off-again ally, the minute he finished his inaugural Parliament speech, with his entourage running after him, trying to keep up.

Etiquette and protocol place some demands on behavior, but not to the point of having to let all spontaneity and effusiveness and fun out of even high-level political interactions. Since most of these go unrecorded aurally, this is pure speculation, but trying to get each other to smile artificially is hard without some casual banter. Granted, it won’t meet stand-up comic standards of timing and content, especially after the fact. There must be thousands of such pieces of failed attempts at humor lost to history. This one made it in.

All that said, the big story here is how a Republican Administration managed to get the party’s nominee for VP to meet 3 South Asian Heads of State/Government so that she could now claim that fact. (Remember Charlie Gibson had actually asked her that.) She dropped Zardari’s name the first chance she got, in her (follow-up) interview with Katie Couric.

OMG yes! totally my pet peeve too…i used to work with this old lady called gena at a books/dvd/cd store (kind of like borders, but called whitcoulls in nz) who fully insisted that it was ‘sex in the city…cos that’s where they do it! in the city!’ to a customer and dismissed my satc knowledge.

it’s ALWAYS BEEN AND! really people.

i love gena but it’s hard to forgive her for that little moment of wrongness.

PS, I grant that sexism certainly exists – and reflects itself in many unpleasant ways. But I think what a person looks like is not irrelevant to their entire persona, and this is even more true of politicians. In the old days, low resolution ‘photowires’ in gray scale printed on poor-quality ‘newsprint’ was all we had. But today’s media has unprecedented reach, access, resolution, color, etc. Given this, it is silly to expect that a fellow politician (derided, in his own country by many, as an intellectual lightweight and playboy) would not comment on the other’s visual appeal. Zardari is guilty, if anything, of flubbing his lines. The point he seemed to have been making is that she is even more impressive in person than on TV (Instead, he said “in life”.) As far as him ‘now knowing why America is ga-ga over her’, he’s dead on. Also, neither seemed fully aware of the implications of a live mike, if they were in fact made aware of it – it is possible that their handlers screwed up, and let it in without either (or themselves) knowing. Watch the clip without the sound actuality to ‘see’ what I mean. It looks innocuous enough. The other thing to note is that video exposes the transparent fakery of the handshakes and artificial smiles completely. And it must have been a really conspiratorial handler who got them to do it twice, showing how completely devoid of spontaneity it can be. In the circs, I see Zardari’s banter as an ‘injection of levity’, rather like the way Hank Paulson went down on bended knee before Nancy Pelosi.

Chachaji,

since you’re sifting through the fine details here, how long did these meetings last? Did Zardari really have to fill up dead time or could he have simply said, “hi, how are you, that’s great, goodbye.” And will he come off looking like anything less than the Heartlanders’ nightmare dinner guest (Not, “guess who’s coming to dinner” but “dread who is coming to dinner!”)? Intentions are irrelevant in the anecdotal exchanges that form real world arguments, I just resent the fact that the people I work with (i.e. patrons of such fair and balanced sites like HotAir, AceofSpades, Little Green Footballs, etc.) are seeing the xenophobic flip-side of what everyone who commented here saw initially, a creepy greasy furriner itching to paw a white woman.

i love geo’s take on this nasty mess. at least you can sing along. he’s really mourning benazir. greasy fool.

73 · PS said

The point is though, as a country’s leader, it’s inappropriate to be making such comments about her look

don’t knock him, he’s just following the lead of republican opinion leaders: RUSH: She’s not going to remind anybody of their ex-wife, she’s going to remind men, “Gee, I wish she was single.”

Why am I not surprised

The point is though, as a country’s leader, it’s inappropriate to be making such comments about her look

don’t knock him, he’s just following the lead of republican opinion leaders: RUSH: She’s not going to remind anybody of their ex-wife, she’s going to remind men, “Gee, I wish she was single.”

I’d have to disagree with you. I really thought he was slimy. What you said above, yes, a person’s looks can be a big influence in all aspects of life…but I do think, particularly in politics it can only take you so far. Look at some of the women politicians like Hilary or Pelosi – I actually think they are both good-looking women – but particularly Hillary, one of the most successful women politicans in history, is considered not attractive. Ferraro or Shirley Chisholm- I don’t think they are considered that attractive either and they were successful in their own right.

I’m really stumped by Palin’s “fans” calling her so attractive – it seems to be the first thing anybody thinks of when she came on board the Mccain campain. Does it reflect on her weak credentials? She has certainly gotten such a different treatment, by fellow politicans, at least in public, than Hillary. All gloves were off when it came to Hillary and maybe this is because, she was so powerful and smart.

The point is though, as a country’s leader, it’s inappropriate to be making such comments about her looks – The fact that the live mike, caught this doesn’t make it less so and yes, it can be an indication that they weren’t prepped for what publicly would be caught. Like I said, I’m sure some of our American male leaders, with their records in adultary and reputations for being a playboy, could have said things like this to other leaders, or women that they worked with, but the live mike didn’t catch it, or they were aware it would be inappropriate and look completely unprofessional to say this. And I don’t think American was going “ga-ga” – I think some Repubs desperate for some attention were going ga-ga and we know that’s about half the population.

I guess you are viewing this a different way, b/c you think there is a stereotype about slimy desi uncles? – but I don’t think that is my issue – as a women, who works, you often get slimy inappropriate comments made your way, and it can be awkward or infuriating – so far it hasn’t been desis that I experienced that have made inappropriate comments my way, so I don’t think I’m likely to stereotype. slimy or inappropriate is the same whatever the person’s background.

As long as our Civilian world leaders can solve matters on the table, I’m with them. West needs to clean up Afghanistan because they are the one who created this mess.