Monday, July 27, 2009

Traded Barbs between Hillary Clinton and Kim Jong-il

An excerpt of a humorous piece by Lisa Van Dusen in the Ottawa Sun:

The diplomatic dustup between the indefatigable Hillary Clinton and the irrepressible Kim Jong-Il has turned out to be one of those rare events in life in which the event surpasses all expectation.

It started when the U.S. secretary of state, while on a crucial leg of pantsuit diplomacy in India, said in response to the eternal, "How do you solve a problem like Korea?" question: "What we've seen is a constant demand for attention. And maybe it's the mother in me or the experience I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention. Don't give it to them, they don't deserve it. They are acting out."

Clinton, in a surely jet lag-induced flourish of passive-aggression, went a step further in Thailand saying of North Korea that "they have no friends left." In the battleground vernacular of the girl's lavatory school of combat, saying that your opponent has no friends left is, ironically given the combatants, the equivalent of a nuclear attack.

Kim Jong-Il riffled through his index card file of overwrought and screechingly funny political rhetoric for every occasion, cross referenced with every rival and potential rival, and pulled out the Hillary cards.

"We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady," the Dear Leader retorted, "by no means intelligent." Then, he went for the hair-pull if not the crotch kick, adding that sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl,and sometimes like "a pensioner going shopping."

But it was what came last that really must've hurt. "She likes to utter such rhetoric" the ailing despot meowed, "unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community."

Ah, out of the mouths of unruly teenagers.

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