This Is The Way It’s Done
If you have cable and can get CNN, tomorrow night at 10PM EDT on Anderson Cooper 360 that man about New York, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, will be interviewed by Christiane Amanpour, CBE, CNN’s chief international correspondent.
To understand why I recommend this program read Ms. Amanpour’s CNN bio and Wikipedia entry. She knows more foreign leaders that the US State Department, has more time in combat zones than General Petraeus, spent more time on the Gulf Coast after Katrina than Michael Brown, and scared Yasser Arafat more than Ariel Sharon.
She speaks fluent Farsi [as well as English and French] and had the first interview with Ahmadinejad after he was elected.
It’s too bad she’s a citizen of the UK, because she would be a major improvement as Secretary of State.
You can’t have a war any more without Christiane. An Australian reporter covering the aftermath of Katrina said he knew it was a major disaster when he saw she was there.
13 comments
scared arafat more than sharon? i’ve worshipped christiane amanpour for a long time, and now i have one more good reason. thanks for the heads-up. i’ll be inviting myself to somebody’s house tomorrow night.
I’ve always admired Christine. I think she’s probably the only reason I turn into CNN anymore. Well, and an occassional helping of that ol’ crusty codger Cafferty giving Wolf Blitzer heartburn.
Thanks for the tip Bryan. I get CNN although that would be 3 am for me
Christiane lives nearby(when she is in town) and we get the opportunity to see at our local watering hole occasionally. An excellent little French bistro called Pastis. She is nice in person and a very commanding presence in a room. I agree that she is one of the major reasons to bother with CNN. Thanks for the heads up Bryan.
I think of Christiane as the kinder, gentler Jeremy Paxman. She is an excellent interrogator and one who, I suspect, understands more languages than she admits to.
One of the main points about her work is that she understands who gets hurt in all these messes, and asks the questions they don’t get to ask.
well, that was quick.
That’s not much of a report.
it wasn’t much of an interview.
I’m sorry to hear that.
he changed his schedule suddenly and got the heck out of dodge earlier than planned [not that i blame him]. the promised 30-minute interview turned into 2 hurried questions. ahmadinejad blathered brightly in reply [or the translator did] with some vaguely conciliatory remarks and then left.
Rats, she has another Middle East leader terrified of her. I think he was afraid of losing his recent surge in Iranian polls for the way he had been treated in the US, because she would have been asking questions in Farsi, so the people at home would be able to hear the questions and answers without a translator.
Arafat hung up on her because she wasn’t following the script of the “poor, embattled victim of oppression” that he wanted to portray. There may have been something about the family villa in France, or corruption. He avoided her like the plague. Although there’s nothing about it in the record, I have a feeling she understands Arabic, even though she makes no claim of speaking it.
if that was his motivation for leaving when he did, he certainly went out on a wave of [non-]popularity. i haven’t seen any videos of his other appearances while he was here, but judging by what little i saw this evening, either he or his handler[s] has a decent grasp of political theater. too bad we can’t send dubya to iranian charm school.
understanding a foreign language without being able to speak it is common enough, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she does understand arabic.
that didn’t sound like her voice doing the translating, although i suppose it could have been. i was too aggravated to notice, after sitting through 45 minutes of other stuff [mostly about the fda, grrrrrrr] only to get a handful of meaningless sentences and a smiley face.
I would assume that the Iranians supplied his translator and CNN supplied hers for the broadcast, and that she would have provided her own translation later.