(no subject)
Yesterday I went to a talk by Madeleine Albright, which was really surprisingly funny. Here are my favorite moments, in paraphrase.
In talking about being the first female Secretary of State, Dr. Albright mentioned how nice it was when she went back for her portrait unveiling and was welcomed by another female Secretary of State, “Stanford’s own Condoleezza Rice.” Following that, one person clapped, and the rest of the audience was momentary silent and then started laughing. To give the audience some credit would be to suggest that the one person clapping was more conservative and an actual fan of Condoleeza Rice, and everyone else laughing at the idea that there was only one such person. However, I suppose it’s also possible that that individual was somewhat ignorant, and cheering at the Stanford reference. Either way, it was a funny moment.
When Dr. Albright was talking about different regions of the world and her previous interactions with those regions, and what she thought would be appropriate for the future, she brought up Kim Jung-il. She said, “according to the intelligence we had on him, he was crazy, and he was a pervert. The intelligence wasn’t quite right though - he’s not crazy.”
When asked what she liked about the U.N., she responded, “Well, I need to like the U.N. because that was the reason my family moved to the U.S. when my father had a position with the U.N. and worked with the struggling Kashmir region. Of course, the fact that now he’s dead, and I’m old, and there are still people working with the struggling Kashmir region…”
In talking about being the first female Secretary of State, Dr. Albright mentioned how nice it was when she went back for her portrait unveiling and was welcomed by another female Secretary of State, “Stanford’s own Condoleezza Rice.” Following that, one person clapped, and the rest of the audience was momentary silent and then started laughing. To give the audience some credit would be to suggest that the one person clapping was more conservative and an actual fan of Condoleeza Rice, and everyone else laughing at the idea that there was only one such person. However, I suppose it’s also possible that that individual was somewhat ignorant, and cheering at the Stanford reference. Either way, it was a funny moment.
When Dr. Albright was talking about different regions of the world and her previous interactions with those regions, and what she thought would be appropriate for the future, she brought up Kim Jung-il. She said, “according to the intelligence we had on him, he was crazy, and he was a pervert. The intelligence wasn’t quite right though - he’s not crazy.”
When asked what she liked about the U.N., she responded, “Well, I need to like the U.N. because that was the reason my family moved to the U.S. when my father had a position with the U.N. and worked with the struggling Kashmir region. Of course, the fact that now he’s dead, and I’m old, and there are still people working with the struggling Kashmir region…”