Friday, November 12, 2010

Hillary Clinton's interview at the Univ of Melbourne



A friend forwarded this article to me about an interview of US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton during her visit to the University of Melbourne on 7 November.
I cut short the lively and lengthy interview to a few exchanges and if you want to follow the entire report, you may visit this site.
QUESTION: Madam Secretary, thank you so much for joining us.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you for having me.
QUESTION: It's very exciting. And we start with a gift.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, excellent.


QUESTION: On behalf of the people's show, its potato chips -- or crisps, I think --
QUESTION: It's a flavor that the people of Australia invented. It's the gravy chip.
SECRETARY CLINTON: I am thrilled.
QUESTION: As you should be, Madam Secretary.
SECRETARY CLINTON: I cannot tell you how much this means to me.
QUESTION: That's great.
QUESTION: Are you a collector of chips? Is this your first --
SECRETARY CLINTON: I am an eater of chips.
QUESTION: We recommend not. Use by -- well, it was use by two years ago. So --
SECRETARY CLINTON: And you resealed the package?
QUESTION: No, no. This has never been opened.
QUESTION: They're the last remaining sealed ones. If you try to eat them, technically that's an assassination attempt by us.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Shall I wait until I am out of Australian air space?
QUESTION: Yes. (Laughter.) With a lot of foreign travel in your job --
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.
QUESTION: -- you must get very good at accepting gifts.
SECRETARY CLINTON: I do, yes.
QUESTION: And making believe that you love them, just like them.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes. There is a whole course on how to do that.
QUESTION: Okay. Is there really?
SECRETARY CLINTON: I mean, usually it is a very happy expression on one's face. Now, sometimes the gifts are really hard to do that with.
QUESTION: Yes.
SECRETARY CLINTON: But you still -- you just have to persevere. And you can't look like you are not grateful.
QUESTION: Have you ever left one behind? Because --
SECRETARY CLINTON: No, no. We take them all.
QUESTION: All right, good.
SECRETARY CLINTON: We take them all. They go back, they're processed, we do thank you notes. You will get a thank you note.
QUESTION: It's not necessary. (Laughter.) Consider us (inaudible).
SECRETARY CLINTON: I have people on my delegation who will actually eat this.
QUESTION: Oh.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, yes. Because they’ll eat anything.
QUESTION: They have fair --
QUESTION: (Inaudible) on Air Force One, did you know?
QUESTION: It’s a best before rather than a use by, so it may be it’s a rough guide. (Laughter.) Well, thank you so much for joining us first of all, Secretary Clinton. And you’re traveling around doing these conversations with predominantly young people. Probably a serious question out of the way first: Is the impetus for these trips that you feel this sort of a mismatch or imbalance, perhaps, between the way American is perceived and as you as the Secretary of State are the conduit to the rest of the world from America with how America’s perceived and what America’s message is?
SECRETARY CLINTON: I think that’s a fair question and I would say yes. I think that for young people today, this is such a busy, almost over stimulated, environment that you all come to maturity in and I think the United States has a deep understanding among people who are older because of the military alliances, the wars we’ve fought against totalitarianism in the 20th century and the like. But for young people, there’s a lot of other things going on and --
Continue reading here.
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