{"id":181378,"date":"2016-07-14T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/07\/14\/its-official-yes-minister-is-a-documentary\/"},"modified":"2016-07-14T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T00:00:00","slug":"its-official-yes-minister-is-a-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/07\/14\/its-official-yes-minister-is-a-documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Official, Yes Minister is a Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"240\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/37iHSwA1SwE?rel=0\" width=\"320\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>This is almost as prescient as The Onion declaring that &#8220;Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over,&#8221; in January 2001<\/i><\/div>\n<p>This is the only explanation for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/jul\/14\/washington-reaction-boris-johnson-uk-foreign-secretary\">the appointment of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the new British Foreign Minister by Prime Minister Theresa May<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">For the second time in a month, Britain has given the Washington foreign policy establishment a surprise, and not a wholly pleasant one. First there was the startling news of Brexit. Now there is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/jul\/13\/philip-hammond-appointed-chancellor-as-george-osborne-exits\">Boris Johnson as foreign secretary<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the same way Brexit undermined the British relationship with the EU, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/boris\">Boris Johnson<\/a> will undermine the British relationship with the rest of the world,\u201d said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a political consulting firm headquartered in New York. \u201cSo you\u2019ve got the map covered at this point.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Johnson arrives in his new post under new British prime minister Theresa May with unusually heavy baggage. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/worldviews\/wp\/2016\/07\/13\/boris-johnson-britains-new-top-diplomat-has-said-some-very-undiplomatic-things\/\">On Thursday the Washington Post<\/a>, ever influential among US policymakers, published a digest of his past gaffes under a headline that drew attention to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/comment\/3643709\/I-want-Hillary-Clinton-to-be-president.html\">a 2007 Daily Telegraph column<\/a> in which he backed Hillary Clinton for president and wrote of her: \u201cShe\u2019s got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;He was similarly colo(u)rful about Vladimir Putin:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Johnson compared the Russian president to a character straight out of the Harry Potter books, in a 2015 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/syria\/12036184\/Lets-deal-with-the-Devil-we-should-work-with-Vladimir-Putin-and-Bashar-al-Assad-in-Syria.html\">column<\/a> for The Telegraph newspaper about working with Russia to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Despite looking a bit like <a href=\"http:\/\/harrypotter.wikia.com\/wiki\/Dobby\">Dobby<\/a> the House Elf, he is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And he also rote a rather rude contest winning limerick about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and he described George W. Bush as, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2016\/07\/boris-johnsons-foreign-strained-relations\/491237\/\">A cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomizes the arrogance of American foreign policy<\/a>,&#8221; as well as the bon mot that, &#8220;For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing,&#8221; which left that island nation&#8217;s attache in London unamused.<\/p>\n<p>(FWIW, I think that all of this is a hoot, but making him FM is a complete mind f%$#.)<\/p>\n<p>Still, it is not surprising that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/jul\/14\/maybe-the-brits-are-just-having-us-on-the-world-reacts-to-boris-johnson-as-foreign-minister\">the rest of the world is wondering if London is just f%$#ing with them<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Like I said, the BritCom <i>Yes Minister<\/i> is a documentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is almost as prescient as The Onion declaring that &#8220;Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over,&#8221; in January 2001 This is the only explanation for the appointment of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the new British Foreign Minister by Prime Minister Theresa May: For the second time in a month, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[984,964,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-foreign-relations","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}