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

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

Gah! (that's the sound of me choking in surprise and disgust).

What a fucking great beside manner that man has. No really, the more I hear about him, the more I wonder how the fuck he got that Noble peace-prize.

Oh shit...... it wasn't for some diplomacy related thing was it......!!!!

[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.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Should introduce him to my boss some time.

"Let's just hope they don't find the bomb in my luggage, eh?"

- Brien, to me, as we walked out onto the tarmac, painfully close to airline staff. Sun Valley Airport, Idaho, USA, September 14th 2001.

It was his idea of a joke.

What?

[cvisors.livejournal.com]

Deary me...

I honestly thought he was better than that...


Benjamin

Tch! If you are going to quote, you should at least get it right!

[francarr.livejournal.com]

"Crying is for babies, little girls and men who have just had their ears ripped off." Oobi-Do Ben-Oobi

[ktwhoopi.livejournal.com]

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

are you serious? did he really say that??

how did he win a nobel prize? i guess you can be super intelligent and still a useless wanker *shrugs*

One moral giant, one moral pygmy

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine just emailed: "I guess that means that Xanana was either gay or a woman in September 99".