Groan, that's a terrible joke, but not as terrible as the joke Putin told Israeli President Moshe Katsav, according to the BBC
Apparently the charming Mr Putin joked about the allegations of assaults and rapes that have been laid against Katsav which have engulfed the Israeli government in scandal, Haaretz. Police say there is enough evidence to charge him with "rape, forced sexual acts, sexual acts without consent and sexual harassment" but under Israeli law a sitting President is immune from prosection and Katsav refuses to step down, Jerusalem Post.
Putin said of Katsav "What a mighty man he turns out to be! He raped 10 women - I would never have expected this from him. He surprised us all - we all envy him!"
But a Kremlin spokesman clarified that although Putin had made the joke "it was not meant to be overheard" and that "I don't think that the proper translation is able to reflect the meaning of the joke." oooooooh, that's alright then. Back to killing Chechens and Palestinians with the pair of you.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Putin his foot in it
Labels: Gender, Middle East, Sex
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2 comments:
now I was talking to my Russian housemate about this, and she says that in Russian this would come out as extremely sarcastic, and is fairly typical of his kind of humour. So in a sense it does mean something a little different because we only get the words without the context, and most jokes are all about the context.
But she also tells me that compared to the jokes he tells about (Muslim) Chechens this is nothing. Particularly the one about how Russians would be happy to circumcise them - they'd happily chop it all off, balls and all. Or the ones that make use of the dirtiest type of prison slang when describing 'flushing terrorists down the toilet'. (She's a linguist and gave me a detailed description of quite how rude this is in Russian, which I promptly forgot most of. But anyway.)
The point is that he's known for his rough humour and plays on it as part of his image. How much of it being suddenly reported now, as opposed to the equally inappropriate 'jokes' about Chechens, has to do with it being aimed at an Israeli minister?
First off, yes I think it's all about it being in Israel - a country that exists - than about Chechnya which doesn't (in the eyes of the BBC) What's interesting is the Israeli press don't seem to have registered Putin was there at all - let only made a "gaff"
Hmmm. I suppose he *could* have been criticising Katsav with biting satire - however, it seems unlikely given his hilarious Chechen joke book coming out this June (not really)
I think the thing for me is that he made this in the context of a real rapist that he is doing business with. I think it demonstrates the imperialist mindset - where the only issues are power and wealth, not how you use them.
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