NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported Friday for our Newscast unit about an opinion piece in China News, a Chinese state media outlet, that called Locke, the outgoing U.S. ambassador, a "'yellow-skinned, white-hearted banana man,' whose Chinese ancestors would have kicked him out of the house, had they known about his future career."
Wishing someone's ancestors pitch him out the gates of the ancestral home must be some kind of obscure Chinese curse, analogous to cursing a man's mustache in the Middle East. Calling him a banana is picturesque.
Lots of Americans had ancestors who got pitched out of their homes in England, Ireland, Germany, Bohemia, China, Vietnam, Ukraine, Laos, Nigeria, Italy, etc...
Early in his posting to China, someone took a picture of Ambassador Gary Locke buying his own coffee at Starbucks in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. And, then, later pictures showed Locke and his family arriving at a Chinese airport carrying their own bags.
Many Chinese were incredulous.
"I think people look at him like a hero this time," Chen Weihua told All Things Considered's Melissa Block. Weihua is a columnist for China Daily, the country's national English-language newspaper, and he joked that to many Chinese Locke looked like a "migrant worker."
They were astonished. Weihua explained why in a column he wrote:
To many Americans, there was probably nothing unusual about this. But to most Chinese people, the scene was so unusual it almost defied belief. How could someone who holds the rank of an ambassador to a big country not have someone to carry his luggage, and not use a chauffeured limousine. In China even a township chief, which is not really that high up in the hierarchy, will have a chauffeur and a secretary to carry his bag. Watching this episode, many Chinese people might start to wonder if the people at the US embassy in Beijing in charge of arranging Locke's reception would keep their jobs.
#4
I agree USN - when he went to Commerce I thought 'Oh Thank God he's gone!'.
He was also known for going to China on a 'fact finding mission' with several WEA (Teachers Union) leaders (on the taxpayer's dime of course) to see how they teach children. I don't know if he carried his own bags then or not.
Wasn't he the one with 'Bats in the Belfry' (literally - bats in the governors mansion attic).
[Powerline] President Obama himself, having delivered a limp warning to Vladimir Putin, decamped for a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, where he told a cheering crowd: Well, its Friday, its after 5:00. So this is officially happy hour with the Democratic Party. I'm afraid this pretty much tells the story.
#4
After issuing stern warnings to Russia not to invade Crimea, the administration, confronted with the actual presence of Russian troops on the ground, philosophized about whether it was really an invasion, suggesting that a more apt term might be an uncontested arrival.
Might as well be a declaration of happy hour. Seems that they have had happy hour for about 5-1/2 years (sarc). The only thing this administration is good for is masking the obvious and creating euphemisms such as Janet Napolitano's. She wouldnt use the word terrorists but instead said In my speech, although I did not use the word terrorism, I referred to man-caused disasters.
#8
Obama is an amateur going against world champions on the world stage. Putin has been playing rope a dope with Obumble since 2008 and now it is time for the knockout.
Obama is way... way... way out of his league and the world will pay for it.
#9
Unfortunately both O-BumblingFool and his sidekick the Fawning Media still think they are the cock of the walk on the international diplomatic scene. That all he has to do is talk sternly and shake his whittle pecker finger at them and they will straighten up and behave.
They are going to get a lot of people killed.
Some of them know this - but simply don't care.
#10
I feel at this stage shooting is inevitable and that will roil the financial markets, and that's only the beginning. This will reverberate for years.
He skips the NSC briefing on the Ukraine situation?
And lets that air-head Rice brief him later?
Oh sweet mercy, it is even worse than I thought.
I thought he was an empty suit hiding under his desk in the oval office...but he's worse. If Bush had missed a NSC briefing the MSM would have been howling for his head.
We'll probably find out he bet the bank on Russian natural gas futures...
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/01/2014 22:41 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
