Monday, March 24, 2014

Michelle Obama goes Tibetan in China

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; A Martinez and Alex Cohen, Take Two (scpr.org)
B----, please! Don't show me up. - Why, Laura, I would never dream of it; I'm Ivy League.

They're fighting again because her husband, G.W., used to be dictator and now he's gay and paints himself in the bath. - I thought Barrack's gay? - Yeah, both! (Alexsaurel/flickr)
  
The FLOTUS dresses well (Haley Fox/SCPR)
The First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama is currently visiting China with her daughters Sasha and Malia and her mother, Marian Robinson. She is currently in China, where her style is generating a lot of buzz.
 
First ladies in Beijing (Stuart Leavenworth)
Mrs. Obama is there to promote educational exchanges between the U.S. and China, but she has also subtly been addressing the issue of freedom of expression.

For a look at the substance of the First lady's trip, Laurie Burkitt, a reporter in the Beijing bureau of the Wall Street Journal, joined Take Two: LISTEN

HIGHLIGHTS
Indirectly criticized China for severe restrictions on the media.
FREE TIBET!
She was giving a speech to Stanford Univ. at Peking, one of China’s biggest and most important universities. She talked about the importance of overseas education to broaden the horizon of each individual and mixed in between that she mentioned freedom of speech and access to information. She used pretty strong language. She said something like, ‘Countries are stronger and more prosperous when everyone can be heard.’ She mentioned her own experience and said, ‘My husband and I are on the receiving end of a lot of criticism but we really wouldn’t trade it in for the world.’
Later this week she will be eating a Tibetan lunch in China.
Tibetan food is not the world’s greatest. It’s mostly [momos]. So the reason to eat it would be to open discussion about a region of China that has really been fighting for independence. And Pres. Obama recently met with the Dalai Lama, the religious leader who now lives in India [because] he’s not allowed to go back [to Tibet/China]...

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