Another Claude Rains Moment: BushCo's War On Foreign Language Skills

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you, to learn that BushCo's foreign service workers/ embassy staffers aren't proficient in the languages of the countries where they're posted.

It's not like there are zillions of us with 4.0 GPA master's degrees in those foreign languages. It's not even like there are millions of Americans who are native speakers of those foreign languages.

OK, enough sarcasm.

It's the ideology, Stupid.

Foreign language majors are open to new cultural experiences and accepting of a different way of looking at the world. Let's face it: Foreign language majors are... liberal.

Of course, BushCo wouldn't hire them.

What were you thinking? That BushCo cares more about diplomacy than ideology?

Guess again.

I first noticed this whole Republican anti-foreign language deal when Ronald Reagan appointed his movie actor friend, John Gavin, the US Ambassador to Mexico.

Ahem.

Every regular FSO has the same list of incompetent political appointees. They always include the movie actor John Gavin in Mexico, housing developer Milan Bish in Barbados, Chicago insurance executive Paul Robinson in Canada, uranium mining engineer William Casey in Niger, public relations executive Mark Austad in Norway, big game hunter Theodore Maino in Botswana, and Helene von Damm in Austria. The latter was Reagan's personal secretary.

Many of these people are what Ambassador Cohen call "wild eyed ideologues." Our Ambassador to Romania is a case in point. The State Department's confidential assessment of David Funderbunk, prepared for his confirmation hearings, tries to reassure the Senators that "He has not been identified strongly by the public as an anti-communist. The Romanians see him as fair and impartial." Funderbunk has, in fact, openly antagonized the Romanians with his stereotyped blend of anti-communism and strident Christianity. (He is the editor of the Journal of American Romanian Christian Literary Studies.)

In the spring of 1984, Reagan announced the selection of Thomas Anderson Jr., 38, to be his ambassador to Barbados. Anderson has been an assistant to the House Minority Whip, Representative Trent Lott, for a decade. But his chief asset seems to be the fact that his wife is an executive secretary to Craig Fuller in the White House's Office of Cabinet Affairs. We now have an ambassador in Hungary, Nicolas Salgo, whose qualifications include the fact that as owner of the Watergate apartment complex, he is landlord to not a few of the rich and powerful in Washington.

There's one thing that BushCo does well: Reward incompetence and fundraising ability.

Language skills? BushCo doesn't need no stinkin' language skills. Were it so, English wouldn't be the big damned obstacle that it obviously is for this administration.

Alas, knowledge.

Best bar bet in the world: Delilah didn't do it.
Judges 16:19-- And she made him (Samson) sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head.