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The German Chair: a tale of torture at the hands of an America-hating diplomat
by Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal EFL'd -- you really should read it all.
TGA, if you know this guy from the consulate, you need to take him aside for a good talking-to.
. . .What occasioned this discovery was meeting a relatively senior German diplomat posted to the New York consulate. My wife--also German--knows his wife socially; our children use the same playground. They had invited us to their home for Sunday brunch.

I should say here that I speak almost no German, and it quickly became apparent that the diplomat's wife spoke almost no English. So it was perhaps natural that, soon after we arrived, she and my wife took to one corner of the spacious apartment while the diplomat ushered me into his study. Less natural was the conversation that followed. I made the normal chitchat of first encounters: praise for the unobstructed (and million-dollar) views of the Hudson River; a query about what he did at the consulate.

But the diplomat had no patience for my small talk. Apropos of nothing, he said he had recently made a study of U.S. tax laws and concluded that practices here were inferior to those in Germany. Given recent rates of German economic growth, I found this comment odd.
Indefensible, even
But I offered no rejoinder. I was, after all, a guest in his home.
Actually, I must give Mr. Stephens credit for the self-discipline to hold his tongue through what followed. I would not have been so restrained.
The diplomat, however, was just getting started. Bad as U.S. economic policy was, it was as nothing next to our human-rights record. Had I read the recent Amnesty International report on Guantanamo? "You mean the one that compared it to the Soviet gulag?" Yes, that one. My host disagreed with it: The gulag was better than Gitmo, since at least the Stalinist system offered its victims a trial of sorts.
"So you mean Gitmo is more like what you folks were doing in the early to mid 1940s--without the gas chambers, I mean."
Nor was that all. Civil rights in the U.S., he said, were on a par with those of North Korea and rather behind what they had been in Europe in the Middle Ages. When I offered that, as a journalist, I had encountered no restrictions on press freedom, he cut me off. "That's because The Wall Street Journal takes its orders from the government."
"So you've discovered Democratic Underground, I see."
"Nein! Daily Kos!"
By then we had sat down at the formal dining table, with our backs to Ground Zero a half-mile away and our eyes on the boats on the river below us. My wife and I made abortive attempts at ordinary conversation. We were met with non sequiturs: "The only people who appreciate American foreign policy are poodles."
"But, Herr Diplomat, I thought you said a moment ago we were bloodthirsty cowboys, not poodles."
"You are bloodthirsty cowboy poodles!"
After further bizarre pronouncements, including a lecture on the illegality of the Holocaust under Nazi law, [a new low point in world moonbattery] my wife said that she felt unwell.
I'm the same nationality as this moonbat? Eeeewww!.
We gathered our things and left.
"Sweetheart, I'm so glad we didn't move to Germany after we got married."
"Honey, why do you think I emigrated? It was to get away from people like him!"

For days now, I've been asking myself why I didn't answer the diplomat in the way he deserved. Partly it had to do with my wish not to spoil the friendship between our wives.
I suspect your wife may be rethinking that relationship.
Partly, too, his assault was so discombobulating I didn't trust myself to respond coherently.
On the other hand, he was pretty incoherent himself, so no biggie.
But the main reason is that, as his guest, I was restrained by an innate sense of propriety, a sense the diplomat did not share.
"It's called 'common courtesy,' Herr Diplomat. Perhaps you have heard of it?"
And herein lies the essence of the torturer's art.

To inflict harm on a defenseless person--whoever he may be, whatever he has done--goes against the human grain. It is one thing to strike out at somebody who has just hit you. It's another thing entirely to abuse someone who, whether as prisoner or as guest, is in your power.

Long ago the Greeks understood that nothing is so barbarous as inhospitality. And according to popular exegesis, God did not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of its citizens' sexual crimes but because of their crimes against hospitality--the rape of strangers.

Torturers, however, are those rare people who can inflict injury on the defenseless, work which is made easier for them because they know most people are unable to respond in kind. Thus it was with the German diplomat. Seated at his table, I submitted to his rules. But rather than oblige my submission with courtesy, he took the opportunity to inflict his insults--insults to which I, as a guest, was bound not to resist. . . .

I am tempted to violate journalistic standards here by revealing the diplomat's name. Of course I won't: That's not the sort of man I am. The trouble is, that's one big reason why he is the man he is. German readers especially may recall the words of Brecht: The womb is fertile still, which bore this fruit.
Love that last paragraph.

The e-mail contacts for the German consulate in NYC may be found here. The consul general is Uwe-Karsten Heye, who is probably not the guy in the story. (He looks too old to have school-age kids.) If you choose to write, be polite in your critique--Herr Diplomoonbat might learn from the example.
Posted by: Mike 2005-06-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=121870