Did you catch this story about a roomful of Chinese university students laughing at our Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yesterday? Here's the story from FT Lessons in Friendship Draws Blushes
In response to a question after his speech, Mr Geithner told the student audience that "Chinese assets are very safe", drawing loud laughter from his student audience - a reflection of scepticism among many Chinese about the wisdom of building up large foreign reserves.
I bet Mr. Geithner wishes he never studied Mandarin. Otherwise maybe his host could have thrown some bull-sh*t explanation out to Tim like, "They are not laughing at you, the translator made a mistake and translated your words into, "Tickle my ass with a feather." No such luck for Tim.
Anyway, I've been searching all day for the right clip, which would have been Cheech and Chong's "Sister Mary Elephant". However, the clips available were awful quality. Then I thought of the scene from Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" where Pontius Pilot has a terrible speech issue (he can't pronounce his Rs). You remember they recreate the "Give us Barabbas" scene where Pilot addresses the crowd asking who they would like to be forgiven? The Roman centurions screw with him giving him bigger and bigger names full of "R"s. Every time Pilot says a name the crowd starts laughing louder and louder at his speech problem. I thought that scene would be great to honor Tim's moment but I can't find that scene either.
I did however, find this, which despite having nothing to do with Tim Geithner, is one my favorite scenes of all time.
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