Even American diplomats, a circumspect bunch by trade, are getting into the blogging thing. … Hey, why not join the crowd?
Skeptics will dismiss the effort as just another propaganda channel – and they will almost certainly be proven correct over time – but the public and reporters may find themselves able to mine a few nuggets from these scribblings of our foreign-service personnel, at least until their political overlords clamp down.
The Associated Press reports:
U.S. diplomats are revealing their personal sides on the new State Department blog.
In posts over the past week, contributing envoys have written about being “mesmerized by the images of brave Burmese monks and their supporters” as the Myanmar junta launched a bloody crackdown on protesters, and the heartbreak of hearing news of another bomb explosion in Beirut.
Although the blog, launched Sept. 25, has its dull aspects – the “Dipnote” name being one – it lives up to its promise of providing glimpses of diplomatic work and what it’s like to serve overseas.
Prominently featured this morning is Andrew Natsios, the president’s special enjoy to war-ravaged Sudan, who tells of a meeting there last week that included former President Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, and the wife of Nelson Mandela.
Amid all of the horror stories coming from that region, Natsios uses his blog to recount the reception his group received in the state of Torit, where “more than 400 people lined the airstrip where we landed.”
“There were dancers and singers and tribal elders with lavish headdresses made of ostrich feathers,” he writes. “The people carried a large banner thanking the United States for the (January 2005) Naivasha accords that ended the war.”
While a genuine “mission accomplished” banner is notable alone, it was the next anecdote that separated this blog entry from what you would normally expect from government communications.
“After we landed the townspeople slaughtered a white bull – and I jumped over it, as Sudanese tradition demands. It is said that the spirit of the bull blesses the one who jumps.”
Thirty years ago I covered an election-night victory celebration in the home of then state Rep. Andrew Natsios, a rare Massachusetts Republican politician; a thoughtful and effective one, as I recall. The party involved no slaughtering of livestock.
However, thinking back on that night and all that has transpired in this country since, I couldn’t help but appreciate that in American politics, as opposed to Sudanese tradition, a decidedly different role is played by the bull.
Blog on, Dipnoters, blog on.
