Innocent Abroad
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Innocent Abroad End of the Karen Hughes era. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES At a concert in Kansas City in June, a singer from the popular Los Angeles-based multicultural band Ozomatli fired up the...
...Viachorka’s speech was spellbinding, inspirational...
...There you have it...
...Nice speech,” she said...
...Some people believe there was a Holocaust, others do not...
...This is a great question to get us started...
...The crowd responded, according to one witness, with a “sea of middle fi ngers” and “deafening cheers...
...We do, too...
...He is endowed with intellectual gifts and gave a wonderful speech about his own life—in and out of prison—and human freedom...
...They report...
...On a trip to Prague in June 2006, when Hughes sat down for an interview with a reporter from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, she was asked about anti-American rioting in Afghanistan...
...history and unwittingly insulted her audiences by talking down to them...
...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES At a concert in Kansas City in June, a singer from the popular Los Angeles-based multicultural band Ozomatli fired up the crowd the way he knew best...
...It would be Register’s news judgment—not his lack of language ability— that would turn out to be problematic...
...People-driven...
...She said nothing when Blaya moved to replace Mouafac Harb, an Arabic-speaking U.S...
...In short order, the global war of ideas would become a public relations fi ght, a battle of messages...
...She has bungled explanations of basic U.S...
...Like speaking their language...
...She later added: “I call this work ‘waging peace’ because I believe public diplomacy builds the mutual respect and understanding that is so urgently needed in today’s diverse and global world...
...When reporters in India asked the band about their political views, the musicians did not hold back...
...You can do anything you want, but just don’t burn Bush in effi gy...
...But I can’t stand your government...
...And you know what...
...All of which might prompt someone—say, the president—to ask: Just why are we spending our money this way...
...We believe music is a universal language, so we send everything from jazz to country western musicians to perform around the world—recently a group called Ozomatli, which describes its music as Latino-Asian fusion funk, performed in Cairo, Amman and Tunis, drew huge crowds, and delivered a message that our differences can enrich rather than divide us...
...Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...There were funny guidelines that were a joke,” said band member Raul Pacheco...
...and, as such, make “unlikely diplomats” on a mission to improve the image of America overseas...
...He was so impressive, your heart leapt...
...Hughes quietly endorsed the efforts of Joaquin Blaya, one of three Democrats on the BBG, to remake parts of U.S...
...Viachorka fi nished, acknowledged the enthusiastic applause of those gathered to hear him, and walked back to his table...
...You decide...
...And as the Wall Street Journal reported, at least some of Al Hurra’s coverage of a Holocaust conference in Iran presented the slaughter of 6 million Jews as a matter of opinion...
...I like to say that the initials—PD—remind us that public diplomacy is people-driven...
...And what is public diplomacy, anyway...
...The State Department did nothing to discourage them...
...Let’s give a message to George W. Bush...
...You hate our government...
...Pacheco continued: “We’re walking around the pyramids, and this guy just came up to me and said, ‘Where are you from?’” “I’m from Los Angeles,” the musician responded...
...Despite her lack of experience in public diplomacy, Hughes agreed to take the job because she believed her communications skills could help repair America’s image around the world...
...If you’ve been to any of the large antiwar rallies across the country over the past several years, chances are good that you’ve seen Ozomatli perform...
...For a communicator, Hughes has shown a strange propensity for saying the wrong thing...
...CNN diplomatic correspondent Zain Verjee reported that the members of the band are “no fans of the U.S...
...A former television reporter, she had gotten to know George W. Bush in Texas and became one of his closest advisers...
...Karen Hughes boasted about this diplomatic breakthrough in an online chat just days before she resigned as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs last week...
...Hughes reached out to him as he passed her table and whispered her congratulations...
...Maybe...
...Great message...
...Her particular emphasis would be the greater Middle East...
...Two months later, Ozomatli was touring the Middle East, its members “cultural ambassadors” from the State Department on a trip fi nanced by U.S...
...The band was created at a pro-labor rally in the 1990s, and one band member is fond of wearing a “Dumb and Dumber” T-shirt featuring pictures of George W. Bush and his father...
...As luck would have it, Hughes got this as the fi rst question in her chat...
...According to a biography of Condoleezza Rice written by Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, when Hughes met with top aides to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, “she shocked them by indicating that until she visited the Middle East she didn’t realize there was so much interest in the Palestinian cause in the Arab street...
...Unfortunately, I only speak English and a little Spanish that I learned while living in Panama as a young girl,” she wrote in her chat last week...
...shouted Jabu Smith-Freeman, extending his middle finger...
...Public diplomacy...
...All of a sudden it opened up a dialogue...
...citizen, with Larry Register, a former CNN producer with no Arabic, as head of Al Hurra, the U.S.funded television network that broadcasts in Arabic into 22 countries in the Middle East...
...I love the Spanish language—Que bonita!—and one of my goals in the future is to take lessons to improve my speaking and understanding...
...Her job would include oversight of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the entity that coordinates all government-fi nanced overseas broadcasting...
...At least she was consistent...
...As a communicator I understand that the way that you really communicate with people is that you have to speak in ways that are relevant to their lives,” she would say...
...I love Americans...
...taxpayers...
...Uniters, not dividers...
...overseas broadcasting...
...ambassador’s residence in Prague, where the distinguished group heard from Vintsuk Viachorka, an opposition leader from Belarus...
...Public diplomacy’ is an umbrella term for the many ways that our government reaches out to engage and inform people around the world about our country, our values and our policies...
...foreign policy they disagree with, instead choose to undermine it...
...He was a real intellectual, but also a real guy, if that makes sense,” says one person who saw him...
...Hughes came to the State Department in 2005...
...And no better way to gain the respect of those who criticize the United States than to show them that they are not alone...
...Or maybe they’re a lot like the many real diplomats who, charged with promoting a U.S...
...She downplayed anger with the United States and blamed the unrest on “bad crowd dynamics...
...Under his direction, and ultimately Karen Hughes’s, Al Hurra broadcast live a speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah...
...On that same trip, Hughes attended a dinner at the U.S...
...No better way to engage and inform people around the world about our policies, apparently, than to dispatch emissaries who will trash those policies rather than explain them...
Vol. 13 • November 2007 • No. 9
