The Secretary and the Reset Button (A case for promoting U.S. Russian language study)

[Sarah Hurst]

I think the question about whether Condi is fluent in Russian is interesting
just out of curiosity and because of the abilities of various secretaries of
state and the current "reset" controversy. I preferred Obama over Clinton
because I didn't think much of Clinton's alleged foreign policy experience
even before she came out with the claim about having been shot at in Bosnia.
Getting the "reset" translation wrong plus not even having it in Cyrillic is
just weird, and doesn't reflect well on Clinton's diplomatic abilities.

The page in the biography doesn't cite any source, did the author even talk
to Condi when writing the book? I think about a dozen biographies of Sarah
Palin have come out in the past few months! The suggestion that Russian is
hard "because of the alphabet" is nonsensical, and the paragraph about
possessives is just ham-handed and inaccurate. 

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Alina Israeli
Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2009 3:20 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] The Secretary and the Reset Button (A case for
promoting U.S. Russian language study)

Here's the lore from her biography: 
http://books.google.com/books?id=YWcX0F0o88cC&pg=PA26&dq=condoleeza+rice+rus
sian+language

Note, Dr. Korbel is Madeleine Albright's father.


Sarah Hurst wrote:
> Has she even claimed to speak fluent Russian? She studied Soviet politics
> but I've never seen any evidence that she studied Russian seriously. So
why
> attack her for not speaking Russian? I don't even like her but this seems
> like an unfair criticism.
>
>   

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