Sexist and homophobic too...

[tcpip]

We had a parting luncheon for Senior Advisor Ambassador Kaldir from Malaysia. Our esteemed Noble peace-prize winning Minister, Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta opened his speech to the assembled staff with the words.

"Don't cry. Crying is for gays and women".

(1pm, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, June 5).

Honestly, why do I even bother?

Comments

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Wow. How sensationally depressing is that?

And yet it's also so blackly comedic to get these occasional behind-the-scenes vignettes of what these world figures are really like. I've read Ramos-Horta's pieces in The Age, and found them food for thought. His stories of personal loss through war gave me pause with regard to my stance on Iraq. He seems reasonable and measured and thoughtful when he appears on television (and I'm sure he is in reality as well). But then you hear something like this, and it removes this figure from the austere realm of print and television and slaps him down, warts and all, right in front of you - and you realise that, yeah, the world's being run by people as common and flawed and real as the smelly old guy that runs the greengrocer down the street. And that all the pomp and posturing is sadly ludicrous. And we may be in some very real, three-dimensional shit.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he is in reality as well

From all accounts, no, he isn't. From what I've been told, he has the standard corporate bully style of behaviour, that is, charming and reasoned on the public side, but a bully in private meetings. Or as some Chilean women say about their husbands; "A Che at work and a Pinochet at home".

I must confess with the private meetings I have had with him I haven't seen this, but mainly because he's been grovelling for technical assistance.

I guess his little comment was an example of a classic Freudian slip... Saying what he really thinks when he guard is done with the chummy demeanor.