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Author Topic: Palin rallying the Pakistani feminists (smiles free)  (Read 1841 times)
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Tylergal
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« on: September 27, 2008, 06:15:16 AM »

TIME
How Sarah Palin Rallied Pakistan's Feminists
By Omar Waraich / Islamabad Friday, Sep. 26, 2008

U.S. Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin meets with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari in New York.
Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
akistan's President Asif Ali Zardari would have expected that his interactions with American leaders in New York this week could bring trouble at home. After all, relations between the two countries are as tense as they've ever been, erupting into an exchange of fire between U.S. and Pakistani forces along the Afghan border on Thursday. But the meeting that appears to have gotten the Pakistani leader into more trouble than any other was a brief encounter with Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.


Zardari met Palin on Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where Zardari was making his debut on the world stage and Palin was meeting with visiting heads of state in the hope of improving her much-derided foreign policy credentials. The resulting exchange turned Palin into a household name in Pakistan, but saw Zardari pilloried at home as a source of national embarrassment and accused of sexism and impropriety.

In footage now being endlessly replayed on local cable channels and on YouTube, Palin is seen rising to introduce herself as Zardari enters, dressed in one of his signature flashy tailored suits. As custom demands, the two grip each other's hands and shake them animatedly before the cameras. But it is the remarks that follow that got Zardari into hot water back home.

Meetings between Pakistani and American leaders are traditionally staid and predictable, although some Pakistanis are fond of recalling an apocryphal 1963 exchange between John F. Kennedy and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — father of slain prime minister Benazir, to whom Zardari was married. Impressed by the then Foreign Minister, who would become prime minister before being deposed by a U.S.-backed military dictator in 1977 and later executed, Kennedy is alleged to have said: "If you were an American you would be in my cabinet." Bhutto is alleged to have answered, "Be careful Mr President, if I were an American, you would be in my cabinet."

What Zardari said after shaking Palin's hand will likely prove a great deal less memorable. "You are more gorgeous than you are on [television]," he told Palin after she declared she was honored to meet him. "Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you," Zardari added, flashing his trademark teeth-baring smile.

At this point, the two were urged to shake hands again, presumably for the benefit of the cameras. "I'm supposed to pose again," Palin said quietly. Pointing toward the aide that prompted them, Zardari said, "If he's insisting, I might hug."

Pakistani newspapers ran prominent accounts of the "embarassing" incident, while news anchors smirked after airing the footage. On Geo TV, a popular Urdu language network, Zardari's remarks were delicately termed "a light and open exchange of remarks" before the short clip ran with blow-by-blow commentary. A subsequent version was run with an Urdu ballad playing in the background.

Being Pakistan, attention was inevitably turned to how the event was covered in neighboring India. Times Now television introduced the clip with the words "Pakistani President Asif Zardari seems to be a big fan of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, but his first meeting with her has critics saying that he was completely a bit out of line." Straplines across the top of the screen blare: "Pak President Out of Line with Palin", "Zardari Shocks with Sexist Remark" and "Zardari Ignores Diplomatic Propriety".

The criticism was echoed by leading Pakistani feminists. "I feel it's absolutely shameful and a disgrace," says Tahira Abdullah, a prominent women's rights activist. "It is against diplomatic protocol. And he is supposed to be mourning the loss of his illustrious and so-called beloved wife. Instead he's flirting with her in public. He should apologize to her and to Pakistanis."

"President Zardari's charm offensive on Ms. Palin was, well, offensive," wrote political analyst Mosharraf Zaidi in an op-ed for The News. "What excuse does the husband of a global feminist icon have for his faux pas?" he asked, in a reference to the late Benazir Bhutto's status as the Muslim world's first prime minister.

While many reactions have been hostile, some Pakistanis have laughed off the exchange as nothing more than a source of inconsequential merriment. But the country's religious conservatives are unlikely to be so forgiving. A previous inappropriate encounter between a leading Pakistani male politician and an American female politician was seized on by political opponents in parliament after Condoleezza Rice biographer Marcus Mabry described in pitiless detail an abortive charm offensive by former prime minister Shaukat Aziz on the U.S. Secretary of State, after Aziz had allegedly told diplomats that "he could conquer any woman in two minutes".

Mabry's account of the Rice-Aziz encounter spawned a minor media storm in Pakistan, and like it, the furor over the Zardari-Palin meeting will soon be forgotten. With an economy in freefall and militancy on the rise, Pakistanis may have little time to concern themselves for too long over how their president comports himself.
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crazybabyborg
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« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2008, 02:57:36 AM »

My tongue in cheek comment would be this, "Well, if she has that much influence over him, send her to do the negotiations!"

 
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Tylergal
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« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2008, 03:38:37 PM »

CBB, I have read many articles from the British press who compare Sarah's thin resume to that of Margaret Thatcher as well as her beauty when Maggie was young, and they say that Margaret was not shy about using her charm as a negotiating tool.  So, it's all good.
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Tylergal
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« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2008, 03:41:27 PM »

CBB, I have read many articles from the British press who compare Sarah's thin resume to that of Margaret Thatcher as well as her beauty when Maggie was young, and they say that Margaret was not shy about using her charm as a negotiating tool.  So, it's all good.

I meant to say that Maggie and Sarah's resumes were equal in tone and their backgrounds, both humble middle-class.  We need to start drawing our politicians from elsewhere.  The Ivy League all think the same, they all want us to end up a socialist country, whereas those coming from the halls of more-work-hard and demonstrate-less colleges/universities seem to want us to return to our superpower status in the workforce and economically.  Most of the contaminated money in the Wall Street fiasco was brought about by the Ivy Leaguers who not only slopped at the trough but fed there as well.  I really like Drs Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams on the economy and love Dave Ramsey's thoughts.
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crazybabyborg
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« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2008, 12:28:04 AM »

CBB, I have read many articles from the British press who compare Sarah's thin resume to that of Margaret Thatcher as well as her beauty when Maggie was young, and they say that Margaret was not shy about using her charm as a negotiating tool.  So, it's all good.

I meant to say that Maggie and Sarah's resumes were equal in tone and their backgrounds, both humble middle-class.  We need to start drawing our politicians from elsewhere.  The Ivy League all think the same, they all want us to end up a socialist country, whereas those coming from the halls of more-work-hard and demonstrate-less colleges/universities seem to want us to return to our superpower status in the workforce and economically.  Most of the contaminated money in the Wall Street fiasco was brought about by the Ivy Leaguers who not only slopped at the trough but fed there as well.  I really like Drs Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams on the economy and love Dave Ramsey's thoughts.

Oh, I could not agree more, Tyler!!! Post of the Day!!!
Career Politicians, for the most part, are so separated from real life and drunk on the power of their position, that they mold themselves to accomplish reelection; period. Voter memory is short and few citizens are news junkies. The media selects who they want to be elected, and only dig for background when it fits their objectives. Personally, I honestly think that we have arrived at a day that our well informed "gut instinct" and judgement of integrity is all we have to make a wise choice. In my opinion, McCain's experience and depth of knowledge compliments Palin's refreshing "goodness" and proximity to middle class American values. Kissinger answered, when asked about the prospects of Palin's Presidency in the face of McCain's death while in office, that he would not be worried at all. He added that Palin would have in place McCain's foreign policy advisors, and it would not be a matter of just knowledge, but of decisiveness and judgement, and that in his estimation, she was well prepared in that area.
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Tylergal
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« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2008, 01:06:47 AM »

This onslaught by the Saul Alinksy students at Acorn would get to anyone who is used to having an 80% approval rating, suddenly hit with wave after wave of contempt and hate, starting with Andrew Sullivan who said Trig was Bristol's baby and said he had DNA to prove it and even after Bristol announced she was pregnant at the time, he demanded DNA from Sarah and Todd to prove the baby did not belong to Piper.  For God's sake, Piper has not even started menstruating yet. 

I think Andrew Sullivan's AIDS has gone to his brain.  He used to be a fine journalist and after having Bush rebuke his amorous affection for the "Harvard Marlboro man" (as the effete called Bush), the yellow journalism began.

With this manipulation and the general Washington onslaught combined with the media scum, it is a miracle she has not lost her cool.

Here's hoping she gets her killer instinct by Friday, but the pressure is off at least when it comes to my household, because we'll support her on the whole of her history rather than one performance. We like what we see.
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