Word: banquet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Journalists enjoy gaffes as a slight taste of human reality at the banquet of artifice where they sup. But a small secret is that journalists don't mind spin either. A politician's ability to spin is a measure of his or her professionalism, which journalists respect. Furthermore, spin needs to be interpreted, which is the journalist's job. If politicians were totally truthful, political journalists would be out of business...
Permission to attend a dinner at the Iranian embassy is not exactly commonplace for American journalists in Damascus. So neither I, nor my friend Andrew Tabler, editor of Syria Today magazine, hesitated when we were cleared to attend a banquet celebrating the 28th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution...
...Spin constitutes most of what's said in politics and other areas of public life (like Hollywood), and if it's not spin, it's a gaffe. Journalists enjoy gaffes as a slight taste of human reality at the banquet of artifice where they sup. They also enjoy the power of the gaffe to generate stories. Like stone soup, a gaffe can provide days of nourishment from almost nothing. A gaffe offers more stages of grief than Elisabeth K?bler-Ross: denial, quibbling, refusal to apologize, qualified apology, slavish apology...
...writing is crisp, the research impressive, and the anecdotes rich. Alexander Haig, a Kissinger aide who had experienced the effects of Moutai on a China reconnaissance trip, cabled Washington: "Under no repeat no circumstances should the President actually drink from his glass in response to banquet toasts." Walter Cronkite, one of the most senior among the two planeloads of journalists accompanying the President, wore electric socks to keep his feet warm at the Great Wall, but they gave him a series of shocks...
...book's title comes from one of Mao's poems, which Nixon quoted in his banquet toast on the day he met the Chairman: "Time passes. Ten thousand years are too long. Seize the day, seize the hour." With intelligence and verve, Margaret MacMillan has seized the true spirit and significance of "Nixon in China...