Amanpour interrupts Colin Powell to “call a spade a spade”

In today’s media frenzies over unfortunate gaffes, how could this have escaped attention?
 
Last week at George Washington University, a forum was held with five former secretaries of state to discuss advice they would give to the next US President.  There was amazing unity among the five who included Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, James Baker and Henry Kissinger.  They all agreed that the next administration should engage in talks directly with Iran.

But when Colin Power was discussing Iraq, CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour interjected “but let’s call a spade a spade” then went on to critique shifting military forces away from Afghanistan to Iraq and the impacts of this ill timed shift.

That’s right, she interrupted the first African American Secretary of State to “call a spade a spade.”  The amazing part of this is I did not see one mention of this unfortunate unintended gaffe anywhere in the media and did not know of it until I watched it myself.  The expression is seldom heard to avoid any confusion with the modern racial slur.

The absence of the sound bite from late night comics’ soliloquies and CNN’s endless loop, almost makes me think we have grown up.  The media loves to seize linguistic missteps and run them for all they are worth.  Who doesn’t remember Republican Senator George Allen whose hopes of running for president were dashed by his unintentional “macaca“ gaffe.  Is it just me or is this one way higher on the gaffe-scale?


 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments

Leave a comment

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.