“You look kinda Indian. You must be a member of Indian government. I think that all people who look Indian are the members of Indian government. Yes, I am very smart and perceptive.”
BBC has reported that “last thursday US Representative Curt Clawson mistook two senior US officials testifying at a congressional hearing for representatives of the government of India.” Nobody took a blood test though. Apparently everyone assumed he’s just dumb. But maybe he was high on drugs just like his predecessor?
If you think he’s just dumb, you got a point. But if he is that dumb, he is also incredubly lazy. Their names and positions were on the list he got. He apparently never read it. But that’s not even the most glaring mistake he made.
He made that silly, little mistake even though “it’s extremely uncommon for foreign officials to testify before Congress under oath.” So he was, after all, right when he called himself “an outsider”. He really does not know shit. Moreover, he might be totally deaf.
As Foreign Policy’s John Hudson has put it, “both Biswal and Kumar were introduced as U.S. officials by the chairman of the Asia and Pacific subcommittee”. Was Mister Clawson sleeping because of his thorough preparation the night before? If so, the preparation did not help.
The morale of the story is clear: don’t prepare hard, or you would fall asleep and mistake your colleagues for members of Indian government.
“The gaffe comes as members of Congress seek to strengthen U.S. ties to the world’s largest democracy following the election of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this spring.” I am sure this incident has helped improve the way Indians feel about U.S.
There is a definite bright side to this story, however. Mister Clawson has replaced “Trey Radel, who resigned after being convicted for cocaine possession.” So there you go. Congress is definitely getting better. Drug addicts get replaced with sleepy but rich morons. Mister Clawson used to be an executive at a big company and has invested millions of dollars in India. So there you go. American public can feel confident about its choice.
The Young Turks have a brilliant commentary on the story. Their commentator begins by saying: “Finally the district will be represented by someone sensible”. Watch the video.
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Roman Marshanski is the founder of Humoropedia.com and former Hollywood actor. You can Google his name to see the list of his movies (or you can click on his name above this box to visit his personal website). He wrote thousands of pages of fiction. Some of that fictional writing is screenplays and a lot of it is comedic writing. So he completed two feature film screenplays and many shorter literary works, some of which are comedy. He did most of that writing during his film career as a Hollywood actor. He was the lead actor in Rebecca Cremona's Magdalena. Rebecca Cremona was Steven Spielberg's protege on Munich. So he has a deep understanding of the creative process and can be considered an authority on all things related to humor. Indeed, his screenplays contain a lot of humor. That's where his love for jokes started. Eventually, this love of jokes led Roman to the creation of Humoropedia.com, the wonderful home of funny jokes and witty puns. He thinks humor is something very good. If you also think so, please follow him on X now because he has a sense of humor.
