The CIA has a habit of hiring silver spoons with high opinions of themselves for embassy appointments. This I know for a fact; I’ll just leave it there...
Case in point (I read this article earlier this morning):
Vinyl Diplomacy: How The US Ambassador Is Using Indie Music To Get Ahead
Matthew Barzun is hosting gigs at his official residence – in between dealing with CIA reports, John Kerry and the “special relationship”. BuzzFeed News went record shopping with him.
posted on Dec. 23, 2014, at 7:02 a.m.
...Isn’t it weird that this supposedly underdog, anti-establishment music is now the soundtrack of the guys in charge?“No…” Barzun replies, a bit baffled.
He seems shocked when I suggest that a few years ago, bands would have rather been seen dead than associating with the US Embassy. “Oh, really?”
Barzun represents a superpower with interests across the world. He went to Harvard, before becoming very wealthy thanks to his role in the site CNet; his wife is an heir to the Jack Daniel’s whiskey fortune. He got into diplomacy as a result of his extensive fundraising for Barack Obama, serving first in Sweden and then heading to London.
You won’t hear him say a bad word about the US president (“incredibly smart, principled, and pragmatic. Humble, learns from his mistakes, moves on”), and he’s happy to defend the US security services, despite the recent US Senate report into the use of torture by the CIA during the “war on terror”. In Barzun’s mind, this is “history, from 10 years ago,” and it’s time to move on...
He won’t get involved in the 2016 US presidential race, but if all goes to plan, he’ll step down as US ambassador shortly after the election and return home to Louisville, Kentucky. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him make a move into politics once he’s allowed to drop the diplomatic language and engage in politics once more: “I will go back to Kentucky, a city that we love, and I will try to get resettled there and help in any way we can...”