Hillary snaps in Africa
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton snapped at a university student in the Congo when he asked her husband's thoughts.
Turns out, the question was mistranslated and the questioner was asking what President Obama thought (not Bill Clinton), but either way, the secretary of state working for an administration hell-bent on reversing the supposedly brash foreign policy of the Bush years shouldn’t lose it like this.
From the Christian Science Monitor:
On the first of a two-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo to push for peace and an end to the shocking amount of sexual violence seen in the country’s war-torn east, a university student did the unthinkable.
At an open forum for young people in the country’s capital, Kinshasa, he asked her husband’s opinion about the involvement of China and the World Bank in Congo.
“What does Mr. Clinton think about it?” he said, perhaps unaware of the irony, given not only that Mrs. Clinton is the Secretary of State but that she has long been a forceful advocate for women’s rights and was in the country specifically to highlight abuse of women as a weapon of war.
“You want to know what my husband thinks?” Clinton reportedly replied in a forceful voice. “My husband is not the secretary of state, I am. You ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I’m not going to channel my husband.”
Maybe it was jet-lag. Maybe it was that Bill got to rescue the two journalists in North Korea. Maybe it was because she was stuck in the Congo while her husband celebrated his birthday in Vegas.
Or it could be that she feels she’s missing out on the raucous town hall fun back home.
Source:
The Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 10, 2009
Clinton in Congo: ‘My husband is not the Secretary of State. I am.’
