Yuschenko's had a rough week already, and it's only Monday. Reminded me of our meeting with the man around this time last year -- excerpt harvested from a family blog, dated 11 April 2005 -- cameraphone montage is from the same vintage:
This last week I got the bright idea to schlep downtown to the Palmer House to see Viktor Yuschenko, the newly elected President of Ukraine, when he appeared at an event hosted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. I thought we’d hear about the Orange Revolution or his near fatal dioxin poisoning – but I was wrong about that.
Instead, we had the pleasure of standing in line for over an hour to get in, and then waiting over two hours for the good man to arrive. (The event was scheduled to start at 7.30 – it got underway shortly after 9.30.) We spent our time with 1,398 other folks – most of whom were Ukrainians; half of whom were harboring a vicious flu bug that my sweetie promptly contracted and collapsed with 24 hours later. All good fun for only $25 a head.
When the good president arrived he showed a video clip of the footage from the election (generating the most moving moments in the 4 hour long ordeal) and then proceeded to introduce his wife (a Chicago girl) before he addressed the crowd – in Ukrainian. The crowd went wild. We didn’t understand a word. The translator soon kicked in and made it clear that there would be no cogent political insights this night: just a strong fund raising appeal and a big note of thanks to the Chicago Ukrainian community who supported him with 99.6% of their votes (a result that he compared to Soviet times).
Big lesson learned: By the time they get to the big chair, they’ve run out of interesting things to say. We’ll save our time and trouble for the struggling masses from here on out.
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