Posted on 05/25/2002 11:24:06 AM PDT by Roscoe Karns
Saturday May 25, 2002
The Guardian
A rambling and expensive speech by the former US president Bill Clinton in southern China has gone down spectacularly badly, according to the Chinese press.
Many in the audience in Shenzhen, which comprised various dignitaries, found it so hard to follow that they took off the headsets providing simultaneous translation.
Mr Clinton was supposed to speak on Thursday about the "World Trade Organisation and the Chinese real estate economy," because a local property company was paying him $250,000 (£170,000) for the speech.
Instead he uttered platitudes about the need for "personal understanding" between US and Chinese leaders and reminisced about his first visit to China in 1998, when he held a successful summit with the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin.
Members of the audience, who had waited for hours because his plane was delayed, then asked him about international affairs and politics. "Although he had nothing worth saying, he kept going on," the Yangcheng Evening News commented yesterday.
Asked to predict the outcome of the Middle East crisis, Mr Clinton smiled ingenuously and confessed: "I don't know, I really don't know." The entire audience, which included the mayor of Guangzhou and 300 invited foreign and Chinese guests, burst out laughing.
Mr Clinton's chutzpah in collecting his fee without doing any homework has been widely noted. The Chinese Communist party's official People's Daily website reported it under the headline "Clinton reaps $250,000 in 30-minute speech in Shenzhen."
There was no apparent note of censure in the Chinese press comment yesterday; instead, the response seemed to be a hint of admiration that he could get away with. It was noted that Mr Clinton had earned only $100,000 for a speech to the Fortune Forum in Hong Kong last year.
He arrived in China from Japan, where he received an honorary doctorate at Nihon University and lectured on globalisation. Observers in Tokyo suggest that the Japanese press would have been far too polite to say that his speech there was less than riveting.
The last democratic convention that I watched was in 1968. (probably the first and only one as well.)
But I constantly read references to the speech that never ended at the 1988 convention.
You should probably include that year too.
He will reap what he has sown.
Yes. And years later, when the full truth is known, his name will replace Benedict Arnold's in the lexicon.
Clinton transcended mere politics through his descent into what I can only describe as mental illness. His "WINO," (wife in name only) is not far behind.
Yet still, the Liberals love them.
But this piece does add to the richness of it all. Think about it: Clinton has now actually embarrassed a group of Communists!
I'll fall asleep smiling tonight.
It's PAYMENT for secrets, pardons, and thwarted investigations DELIVERED
Heard some author a few months back say that the bent one became enamored of the presidential
perks, and its something like $300M pretax to come anywhere near sustaining that lifestyle.
Amazing from the Chinese press.
Bear in mind that the word choice is from the Guardian, not from the Chinese press. They're paraphrasing.
What a shame. What an embarrassment.
Who is this freak that was propped up so well by our rather uneducated, agenda driven liberal media that most Americans were convinced that he was brilliant?
He is stupid. Immature, greedy, lazy, UNABLE to get to any meeting on time-that absolute height of arrogance, immoral and unethical.
I guess he is too tight to pay good speech writers anymore. Or maybe he is so arrogant that he believes he can speak to educated audiences without preparing for the assigned topic he is paid to discuss. Whatever.
This pig, oops, I am not supposed to insult pigs like this anymore! I mean, this sorry excuse for a human being much less an EX-President of the United States should REMEMBER that when he gives a speech abroad, he may be getting paid, but he STILL represents America to many.
I just don't have the words to relate how much this man disgusts and embarrasses me. Both he and his wife are jokes. Huge jokes played on the American people by elite democrats who put winning above their nation's health and welfare. What losers.
*laff*
I'm glad you picked up on that. In the Oriental Culture, a person laughing is sometimes a sign of embarrassment of the person laughing.
Can you believe the CRAP this idiot does?
I always marvelled at the good press Clinton always received on his "communication skills". I believe that the Lefties in the press corps couldn't stand the fact that Reagan was the "Great Communicator", and so decided to dub Clinton with that title, whether he deserved it or not.
I always found his speeches to be rambling and non-sensical. Also, long-winded (just like the commie that he is). I'm not surprised that his speech was unintelligible; just that someone dared to say that it was.
It'd be funnier if he were to box Zemin. :-D
Well done. LOL.
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