Condie, Showing Sensitive Side, Returns to Washington

Today U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled talks in Beirut and planned to leave Jerusalem for Washington. The cancellation came after Israeli airstrikes Sunday killed dozens of women and children in Qana, Lebanon.

"Condie doesn't show her sensitive side too often," said Paul M. Sark, a conservative in Brooklyn who has been following the career of Secretary Rice closely since he began to dream about her last week. "When children get killed it bothers her. That's why she's coming back home."

Mr. Sark, who leads a life that is amazingly similar to that of George W. Bush, is looking forward to Rice's return to Washington, and assumes George W. Bush is looking forward to her return, too.

"He is a very loyal to Condie," Sark said. "In fact, he's loyal to all the people who have served him so well in working to inculcate democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Lebanon."

Sark also admitted to a personal reason for looking forward to Ms. Rice's return. "Every time Condie returns to America from one of her successful missions overseas, there is a manifestation of her ambergris-based perfume in my living room," he explained. "And when I smell it, I'm overcome with a sense of anticipation for the new birth of freedom in the Middle East that Condie is laboring so hard to bring forth."

Asked by his liberal sister-in-law, Ginger, if he would use pregnancy and birth metaphors if Ms. Rice were a man, Mr. Sark responded: "Lincoln said 'new birth of freedom' in the Gettysburg Address. He wasn't a woman. He was great Republican like Condie."

Asked by Ginger if he was comparing Ms. Rice to Lincoln, Mr. Sark stood up from his favorite chair in the living room, paced for a few moments, then retorted with manful self-control: "Why not? Why can't a woman be compared to a man? Is there something wrong with that?"

Told that he was missing the point, Sark shot back: "The point is that the American people expect their leaders to do whatever it takes to promote freedom and democracy in the world and at home. Like George Bush said about Iraq: 'after three decades of tyranny, this work is not easy.' That's what you cut-and-run liberals don't understand."

"Condie is spearheading a new State Department," Sark went on, flipping open his laptop and firing up the browser. "According to the State Department website she's instituting something new in the world: Transformational Diplomacy."

Sark clicked on his bookmarked links and read to his sister-in-law the following passage from a speech Ms. Rice gave in January, 2006:

"Transformational diplomacy is rooted in partnership, not paternalism -- in doing things with other people, not for them. ...Now, to advance transformational diplomacy all around the world, we in the State Department must rise to answer a new historic calling. ...Like the great changes of the past, the new efforts we undertake today will not be completed tomorrow. Transforming the State Department is the work of a generation. But it is urgent work that cannot be deferred.”

When his sister-in-law Ginger said that Ms. Rice's words were just the "diplomatic gobbledegook version of Bush's policy of pre-emption, also known as doing whatever the hell he wants," Mr. Sark asked her to leave his house.

Mr. Sark, pouring himself a drink after Ginger went to brunch with his wife, sat down again in his favorite chair and said: "Look, all I know is that when Condi does finally get to Lebanon trailing the fumes of freedom and armed with her transformational diplomacy, that everything's going to turn out just fine."

Asked why he was writing about himself in the third-person on his own blog, Sark astringently replied that like those in Bush administration whom he so admires he saw himself as a "realist, who always looks at the world objectively, and in looking at the world objectively doesn't rule out the feeling in his 'gut'"

"Because my life is so similar to George W.'s, and because his gut is what enables him to see the world objectively, I've got to follow my gut, too, and my gut told me to write this entry in the third person."

"Did you know that ambergris comes from the intestine of the sperm whale," Sark asked after his gut remarks, pouring himself another drink. "So that's some awful powerful mojo Condie's got. And along with Bush's gut, I'm sure that we're going to see a very new Middle East very soon."

Technorati Tags: Qana, Condi, Lebanon, Mideast, Condoleeza Rice