La vie est bonne - on a Saturday at least!

I felt French this morning - walking 'to market' with my oversized purse over my arm as my shopping case. Granted "market" wasn't Aux Halles or the other Saturday market dotting the French landsape - but the Harris Teeter up the road and around the bend - but the principle was the same. That principle being activity in pursuit of food that doesn't come out of a bag or box. Cue the rolling hum of cicadias and the fruit tree lined sidewalk (all the leaves dulled to an olive grey under this southern summer heat) and I felt wonderfully European and self-satisfied. La vie est bonne! Buonne! Bueno! Gute! To celebrate I will continue in this European fashion and have a glass of sparkling wine with my brunch and I will sit on my couch looking out over my leafy patio. I would sit outside - but, as mentioned before, it is hot, and buggy. And it doesn't do to stray too far from one's roots. So the couch it is...and if that turns to a little TV...that's not such a bad thing either, for a Saturday. Tschus, Anna

I love a woman who knows she "knows her shit"

Last night Julia Ioff (current senior Editor for The New Republic, former journalist for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Foreign Policy appeared on Lawrence O'Donnell's show on MSNBC to discuss the White House's decision to cancel the scheduled September summit with Putin in Moscow in advance of the G20 meeting. The interview wasn't particularly successfull (this riddle inside an enigma is not easily translated into outraged soundbites) but her blog response to the on-air skirmish is brilliant. You can read the whole post at The New Republic, but have included an excerpt here (emphasis added):

I was invited on the show to talk about Obama's (very wise) decision to cancel his Moscow summit with Putin, about which I wrote here. I am an expert on Russia. In fact, it is how you introduced me: "Previously, she was a Moscow-based correspondent for Foreign Policy and The New Yorker." I'm not going to toot my own horn here, but I was there for three years, I'm a fluent, native speaker of Russian, and, god damn it, I know my shit. Which is why I wish you'd let me finish answering your bullshit question, which went like this: "Julia, to start [the White House statement canceling the summit] with the Snowden factor, for the Russian statement to say, 'this is a situation which we did not create,' is of course a lie. They were in complete control of the outcome of what would happen to Snowden from the second he arrived at that airport. But administration, are you surprised that the administration included it in their official statement about the decision?" Okay, no I was not surprised about their decision to include it in the official statement because Snowden was the catalyst for this decision, and it was a good decision because Russia and America have not been getting along and have not been getting anything done for a while now. Like, for a good year and a half. But I decided to contest O'Donnell's premise that Russia had this thing planned and under control from the beginning, and that they did, in fact, create the situation.... Because O'Donnell didn't let me get a word in edgewise after that, let me explain.

Ms. Ioffe then continues to elaborate on 11 excellent points (again - which really don't translate to the quick consumptive nature of TV talk) which can be summarized as (1) Putin is not omnipotent or some grand master of strategy and Russia is hardly the homogenous monolith outsiders expect; (2) The Obama administration screwed up by unsealing charges against Snowden before having him in custody.

My main beef with O'Donnell is not that he wouldn't let me make these 11 points—because, let's face it, that's not what the TV is for—but that he did exactly the same shit Russians did to me when I was in Russia. They assumed that the U.S. and its government was one sleek, well-functioning monolith, that Obama was omnipotent, and that everyone in the world, including other important (and nuclear!) world leaders, act and must act as Russia demands it should, using Russian foreign policy calculus, and with only Russian interests in mind. Sound ridiculous? Believe me, it sounds just as insane in reverse. The problem is that this was not in the ranting comments section, but was coming from the host of a prime time, national television show. And if you don't have the good sense and education or, hell, the reporting experience to know better, then just let the guests you invited on speak. Otherwise, don't waste my fucking evening.

This post sends a thrill of electric pleasure through me. (1) Because I am a complete Russian history/policy nerd; (2) I love a woman who stands up for herself - particularly if it is to set the record straight on an academic point or "attack a premise"; and (3) I really love the word "fuck."