Karen Hughes Defines Her Job

Karen Hughes was appointed to help mend America's image abroad in spring. Showing how important this image-mending is to Bush, she was sworn in on Friday, mere months after her naming!

Also showing how skilled she will be in communicating with the world, she opens her tenure with this horseshit:

"The images of crime being committed in the face of an awful natural disaster is hard for anyone to understand, people around the world and Americans. It sickens me as an American," she said. "How could criminals prey on vulnerable elderly citizens and children during a time of such horror?"

I'm pretty sure she didn't check a single foreign public opinion poll about Katrina or even get an honest sampling of foreigners before saying that. I'm willing to bet that the looting was not the main thing that non-Americans will take away from the Katrina fiasco. Maybe massive poverty in the richest nation on the world would be noted above looting. Or third-world conditions in the first world. Or the suffering and death caused by the utter incompetence of this government.

One of those is probably top of the heap, since everyone knows the US is a violent nation and has its share of crime -- that's common knowledge and it's an idea exported via our popular culture. But Hollywood blockbusters don't generally depict utterly hopeless poverty and the existence of an ignored black underclass on the scale the world saw on CNN International.

However, to Karen Hughes reflexive Bush-promoting mind, looting at least isn't something Bush did directly, so it takes the focus off his pathetic failure.

If Karen Hughes is going to continue speaking solely to make Bush look good and not to communicate to the world at large in good faith, she is doomed to failure. Which is bad for the US. But probably not the worst failure of the Bush administration.

Also, whatcha wanna bet that she doesn't speak Arabic? What language does she speak, if any?

This little bit from her remarks indicates she probably isn't much of a linguist:

"I've got to tell you, it's impressive to be with Condi, when you're with the Russian officials, to hear her speak the Russian language"

Wow, an American who speaks one of those funny languages -- not just pidgin Spanish. It's so impressive!

Everything this Administration touches turns into a joke.