Two guys walk into an international conference–stop me if you’ve heard this one–and discuss Binny Netanyahu:
“I cannot stand him. He’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama. The US president responded by saying: “You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day.”
Neither leader apparently realised that microphones that had been attached for a press conference had already been switched on, allowing journalists waiting for a press conference to hear the conversation.
Obama was in the process of reaming Sarkozi for not warning him that the French were going to vote to let the Palestinians into UNESCO when this Kinsley gaffe happened.
schlemizel
Oh Christ, now we are going to have to hear a litany of “Obama hates Israel” and other bullshit like that.
Is there any other country on earth that allows its own foreign policy to be driven against its better interests and to the interests of one political party in a different nation?
Ecks
Could be worse.
mikefromArlington
That like saying your a racist because you call Obama a liar…to the person above.
JGabriel
Guardian UK:
Good. It’s time Israel understands how Netanyahu is perceived internationally.
The man is a manipulative self-serving right-wing jackass*. I support Israel, but not Likud or Netanyahu.
*Sorry for quadruple-redundancy.
.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Big Dawg comin up with Mika!
Mino
Netanyahu is such a twister. An evil, evil man. He glows with it. I can’t stand him. HE has made me anti-Israeli for the present.
Samara Morgan
@JGabriel: i dont think you understand how awkward this UNESCO member thing is for Obama.
It means the Palestinians can sue Israel in international courts for building illegal settlements.
Samara Morgan
@Mino: the Israelis have become what they most despised. they are waging war on children.
JGabriel
@Mino:
Don’t go there. That’s like agreeing with Republicans that you’re anti-American if you’re anti-GOP. Anti-Likud is not anti-Israel.
.
YellowJournalism
Obama just needs to inappropriately massage the shoulders of a few heads of state, then instead of a gaffe it will show how “real” he is.
As for the Naked Gun clip, I’ve been told a few times of that actually happening to people. It’s way too easy to foprget the mic.
Maude
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Morning, I’d rephrase the word comin.
JGabriel
@Samara Morgan:
I don’t like to get into the details much on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, because it generally just stirs up shit when the focus needs to be on resolving shit.
That said, I don’t necessarily see a problem with the Palestinians being able to sue Israel over illegal settlements in the West Bank. Israel is trying to improve it’s bargaining position by creating new georgraphical facts on the ground, and the Palestinians should have a process available to call them on it.
.
Mino
Does anybody think today’s Israelis would be bound by a decision of an international court. Ha!
James
It’s going to be a fun fun White House briefing today, methinks. If you aren’t addicted to the daily show of Carney versus the Clowns, you otta be.
This. Well, Sarko is also a jackass, but at least the entire US Congress isn’t required to kiss his ring every day.
chopper
obama will get shit for this, but he’s completely a-fuckin right at least.
it’s like being overheard saying that ‘water is really fuckin wet’.
MattF
Well, I imagine that the Likud-in-DC bloc will get their hopes up that, maybe this time, Jews will abandon Obama, and then be disappointed again.
shortstop
Netanyahu already knows damned well how he’s perceived internationally, JGabriel. This incident isn’t suddenly going to make him see the light that the reason for that is his own actions, rather than his perpetual “victimhood” at the hands of the whole world minus the American right.
deep cap
Sorry, but that makes you an anti Semite.
Criticizing Israel makes you an anti Semite.
Criticizing Likud makes you an anti Semite.
Criticizing Netanyahu makes you an anti Semite.
Criticizing Joe Lieberman makes you an anti Semite.
Questioning America’s relationship with Israel makes you an anti Semite.
You can’t win.
James Hare
Doesn’t seem like so much a gaffe as bad planning by the folks handling the translation. They told Sarkozy and Obama that people wouldn’t be able to listen and then told the reporters “we won’t give you headsets till we’re ready.” The reporters did what reporters do — tried to find a way around that.
Why should it be news these guys don’t like Netanyahu? I thought it was pretty clear from every time I’ve seen him with other world leaders that they’re uncomfortable even being on the stage with him.
beltane
I also can’t stand Netanyahu and think he’s a liar. Today we are all Nicholas Sarkozy.
cleek
the ijits at NRO are all upset about the fact that the journalists agreed to not report what was said (even though, it has obviously been reported). they’re mad that W never got such treatment. wah!
WereBear
ALL MIKES ARE LIVE.
Period. That’s how I was taught… and you can never go wrong that way.
4tehlulz
Inb4 Politico vapors about Obama losing the Jewish vote.
barath
@James:
Is Carney good? I’ve never watched his briefings, but I hope he’s better than Gibbs.
schlemizel
@Samara Morgan:
Maybe that would be an alternative to suicide bombings – perhaps it will be the road out for both parties.
Hey! Look everybody – I’m seeing a ray of actual sunshine here. Mr. gloom-n-doom thinks maybe UN membership would actually HELP solve the issue.
That would explain why the GOP & Likud are against it.
schlemizel
@WereBear:
I actually went to broadcast school in the 70s & they drilled that into our heads every day. All mics are always live!
shortstop
All mics are live and the guns are always loaded.
Bill E Pilgrim
We had a whole discussion of the translation earlier here, and the Guardian’s version is the worst yet. At least going by the what was reported in French, which was already translated from English and on and on so who knows.
Yeah I know a little kerning-y but yeesh.
James
@barath: Oh, yeah. It’s one of the best shows on your teevee! I couldn’t stand Gibbs, thought he was THE worst presssec in history, and I had a very dim view of Jay Carney, having sparred with him blogwise in the past. But I tells ya, he is one. great. pressec. Really, watch a couple for yourself.
Feudalism Now!
This may be another accidentally- on purpose gaffe. Binny Net and Likud are the biggest hurdle to a lasting Palestinian-Israeli peace. To move forward they need to be marginalized. The UNESCO vote was one path, labeling Binny/Likud as untrustworthy partners is another. The American press will cover this as an Obama stumble, but the European press is going to dig deeper to bring the lies to the surface, even if it is only to distract themselves from the Euro/Greece meltdown.
Cacti
I can’t believe that no one has mentioned what good news this is for John McCain.
gelfling545
@deep cap: One is reminded a bit of one’s adolescent children screaming “You hate me!” as you try to keep them from flushing their lives down the porcelain convenience.
arguingwithsignposts
@James:
ORLY?
Worse than Ari Fleischer? Worse than Scott McClelland? Worse than Dana Perino??
Let’s have a little perspective, please.
JPL
What I would like Carney to say…
Carney: The President has no direct knowledge that Netanyahu lied to Sarkozy.
Media: But, but…
Carney: The President deals with issues about Israel every day. End of Story…
Barry
@Mino: “Does anybody think today’s Israelis would be bound by a decision of an international court. Ha!”
The threat is that twenty years down the line, anybody who bought the seized land could have their assets in other countries messed with.
Sorta like the USA and Cuba. Which of course, is totally different :)
James
@arguingwithsignposts: As pressecs go, Ari was very effective, and Dana Perino was a smooth operator. She held those little press puppies in the palm of her hand. McClellan wasn’t that swift. Just because they were bushies, doesn’t mean they weren’t good, and effective, at what they did.
James
@JPL:
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We’re so glad you could attend
Come inside! Come inside!
There behind a glass is a real blade of grass
be careful as you pass
Move along! Move along!
Come inside, the show’s about to start
guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you’ll get your money’s worth
The greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth
You’ve got to see the show, it’s a dynamo
You’ve got to see the show, it’s rock and roll …
Bring your popcorn, too.
Mino
Hey, if this gets his panties in a twist, it’s all good. It might delay the attack on Iran or keep us out of it.
arguingwithsignposts
@James: We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Perino, especially, who didn’t even know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
I don’t judge the effectiveness of a press sec’y based on how well he/she stonewalls. Gibbs wasn’t the best, but he damned sure wasn’t in Perino territory.
Steve
Anti-Netanyahu is not anti-Israel any more than anti-Obama is anti-American. In fact, Netanyahu isn’t even the head of state. People are so dumb.
Suffern ACE
Oh great. Now Benny is going to need to give another speech so the the Congress can show just how much they really love him. It will need to have 20,000 standing ovations this time, lest anyone be caught on not clapping.
James
@arguingwithsignposts: It wasn’t exactly a bad thing, from the bushie perspective, that his petite, blond, good-looking, extremely well-dressed press secretary was, um, not that smart. In fact, it was a big plus.
I guess we will differ on how to judge the effectiveness of presidential press secretaries, then.
Cheers.
OzoneR
@JGabriel:
depends, I know people overseas who were not rooting for America to succeed when Bush was President but did in the 90s and are now.
Social Outcast
Unlike Obama, Mitt Romney would be able to deal with Binny using his awesome powers of being agreeable to whatever the right wing in Israel wants. In fact, Romney would be able to tell Binny that he is not only now jewish, he has been consistently jewish even while being a morman. Any reports to the contrary are due to the fact that people don’t understand nuance.
Hill Dweller
Clinton despised Netanyahu. Hell, from everything I’ve read, to know Netanyahu is to despise Netanyahu.
Cacti
@Social Outcast:
I wonder if Bibi knows that Mitt believes the New Jerusalem will be built in Jackson County, Missouri.
Villago Delenda Est
@schlemizel:
Both need the status quo…intractable hostility and conflict…for their own selfish reasons.
It’s like Roe v. Wade…Rethugs talk about it all the time, but won’t do anything to really move forward on repealing it, because it would kill a lot of peasant fleecing.
PeakVT
@Steve: He’s the head of government, though, and that’s the position with power in parliamentary systems.
El Cid
Likud is not somehow uniquely responsible for Palestinian-crushing and land-stealing policies. It wasn’t Likud which leveled Gaza right before Obama’s inauguration, nor were they different in expandings settlements and their proxy seetc. Worse in other ways, though.
gogol's wife
@Cacti:
Where I grew up. Yay, Jackson County.
RalfW
But Obama is an America-hating spineless failure with no foreign policy experience whatsoever. So surely it’s a figment of the librul imagination that Obama would ream anyone.
Chris
@El Cid:
This.
I’m sympathetic to the fact that not all Israelis are racist jackasses, but it’s also a little too easy to simply push it all on Likud.
El Cid
Blaming “Likud” as though Palestinian-related Israeli state policies were the fault of just an egregiously right wing racist and anti-democratic party is simply false. No major poliitical party in Israel offers any more than lip service to p.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
Unfortunately, Israeli policies in relation to the indigenous population from the beginning (all the way back before there was an Israel) were not all that different than American policies towards the indigenous population.
Colonialism in the face of an existing population is never pretty.
Mary
@Bill E Pilgrim: It shouldn’t surprise and impress me that the President speaks French, but I have to admit that it does.
GregB
This is such an affront that Matt Drudge has been frontpaging this story for most of last night and still today.
I love how the machismo minded right wing loves to smear people’s faces in shit but are so supine to Israel that a pathetic little slight like this would get them wound up.
At least Sarko has some redeeming qualities.
Nemesis
A US president overtly hostile to Israel. Anything short of kissing the ground tread upon by Bebe will be interpreted by the rwnm as turning our collective backs on Israel, which couldnt be further from the truth.
Bebe is a neocon asshole. He loves to create misery for Obama, but, of course, that cant be discussed in polite company.
dww44
@James: I agree about Gibbs. Indeed it was his performance from the get-go that made me realize that the administration was definitely not going to come out strong for progressive or liberal positions.
Gibbs never seemed to do anything but waffle in his press conferences, and he took forever to make a point, or Not make one, as was the case much of the time. I could not stand to watch or listen to him. and, still can’t.
shortstop
@Suffern ACE: No kidding. I’m taking the day off teevee and the intertubes when all that goes down, lest I vomit copiously.
pete mack
This doesn’t sound like a gaffe at all: “please don’t plug in your earphones, Obama and Sarkozi are in private conversation.”
Davis X. Machina
Remind me again where the problem is.
Netanyahu is a liar, and Obama does have to deal with him every day.
Last time I looked, Obama was a law professor and the truth of an assertion is an airtight affirmative defense against a charge of libel.
Nemesis
@arguingwithsignposts: Tony Snow should be at the top of that list.
Didnt he, during his first day as PS, state that racism in murika was over?
Here are some other gems…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tony_snow.html
PeakVT
@Mary: I think the conversation was in English.
Bill E Pilgrim
[email protected]
No I think he said it in English, and a French reporter heard it and wrote it in French. What he wrote though was not “You’re fed up with him?” with the question mark, which slants the meaning.
FlipYrWhig
@dww44:
Um, that’s the nature of the job. You’re nominally there to answer questions, but day to day you’re there to choose language carefully, be as noncommittal as possible, and otherwise work to shut up and shut down the stupid fucking lazy bastards who call themselves “The Press.”
DougJ
This is weird, I’m checking out the usual AIPAC outlets — Kaplan, TNR — and I haven’t seen anyone talking about this. Why?
Mary
@PeakVT: Gotcha…I was a little confused by the BBC report, which says:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15635476
MattF
@DougJ: Because they’d have to try to deny that Netanyahu is a liar. The “some” who would normally “say” are silent in this case.
PeakVT
@Mary: The articles aren’t clear, but I know Sarko speaks English, and I can find nothing about Obama speaking French.
El Cid
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, but (a) the subject matter is Israel, (b) the Palestinians are actually suffering the effects of the entirely U.S.-backed Israeli state policies, and (c) if this is what you intended, it is an utterly irrelevant dodge to attempt to make such discussions about the hypocrisies of prior U.S. governments toward pre-Columbian residents of this continent.
Israeli state policies are blowing the shit out of and stealing all the resources from and making a joke out of any future ‘state’ possible for the Palestinians, and no whining about how the US carried out barbarities against its own domestic population can change that, nor lessen the barbarities of Israeli policymakers.
Believe it or not, it is in fact reasonable for people to come to conclusions about other nations’ policies without having to represent the nation-state within which they live as free of hypocrisy.
Part of that can be to clearly state what is happening, and not do so within the political limits of one or more nation-states’ domestic political systems.
So, those blaming ‘Likud’ for these Israeli state policies are correct only to the extent that they indicate an increase in barbarity and outright thievery, though the governing coalition has been impressive in moves to prioritize right wing religious fundamentalists, blunt racism, and the destruction of democratic rights and representation for Israeli Arab citizens.
Please, unless someone appears to be making the point that US policies regarding its own indigenous populations are superior, keep the hypocrisy charge to relevant discussions.
dww44
@FlipYrWhig: Maybe so, but his execution of that attribute left a lot to be desired IMO and mostly pissed off lots of people to his left. Those on the right weren’t going to change their minds anyways. A lesson that took the administration the first 2 1/2 years to assimilate. Still don’t care for Gibbs. He’s seems to stand for nothing, even after leaving the job for quite some time.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
Oh, I’m not asserting that US polices are superior in any way, or less morally abhorrent.
I’m asserting that the Israelis, even before the Likud cranked up the policies to 11, were following pretty much the US playbook on dealing with those creatures in the way of Manifest Destiny.
Illegal settlements in the West Bank preceded the rise of the Likud to power in the 70’s.
The Likud was a bit more upfront about the “Greater Israel” think that includes “Judea and Samaria” as part of the Zionist Homeland. You indigenous peoples, get thee to the “Palestinian Homeland” on the east bank of the River Jordan.
El Cid
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s not quite fair to blame Likud generically for turning it up to 11, since typically under Labor far more settlements were built than Likud.
Mostly importantly, why not? Why would Israeli policymakers do anything else?
YellowJournalism
I don’t know why, but it makes me smile to think that the President had the same conversation many of us have about our annoyoing coworkers when they’re pissing us off.