Cryin' in my Kofi
Posted by Heather Hurlburt
Will the blog kibbitzers stop us before we pun again?
Suzanne's Clinton analogy strikes home for me, and not just because I wuz there. Again, the question: how can somebody so smart, so politically savvy, such a keen analytic mind not see that this was happening, that it was a danger to him, and that it had to stop?
I'd love to hear Suzanne's take on what was happening in the mind of the SYG. But I'll also point out that you can name people from Bill Clinton to the just-deposed head of AIG who have found themselves in similar situations. Not too many pay the ultimate price, Greenberg not withstanding. And that gives me a chance to strike one of my favorite soapbox poses about international organizations:
They and their staffs put their pants legs on one at a time (or don't, in some cases) just like the national governments, politicians and citizens who love to excoriate them. We love to put them on pedestals and then knock 'em off.
Corruption is wrong. Corruption that was winked at by national governments, including ours, is still wrong. Not wanting to ask too many questions about what your child is up to seems a pretty normal human frailty to me (and my kid is less than a year). But an organization that does all the stuff the UN does manage to do, in spite of everything, on the budget of one mid-sized American state with about as much corruption as you seem to find in many state governments--that still seems miraculous to me.
So, speaking of American states, why isn't Norm Coleman as worried about Tom Delay's corrupting effect on Texas and Washington politics, which affects a lot more money and a lot more Americans, as he is about Kofi Annan?