I've now had the opportunity to read the Ambassador's speech in the original. I thought his remarks were totally appropriate for a speech on the occasion of Prophet Mohammed's birthday. Almost all the speech was on American-Muslim relations, and on religion freedom. He barely mentioned the Fiji political situation but what he did say, the media misrepresented, as I had supposed. The misrepresentation cannot have been accidental. Read the speech for yourself by clicking here. Then compare it with my posting and those of the media.
A commentator on my original post thought my emphasis on "semantics" missed "the larger point .. the media failed [to raise the issue] ..."the US does not call for democracy in China, Saudia Arabia; why then does the US State Dept have a different standard for Fiji?" This, of course, is a valid question but the issue I raised was the probable distortion by the media of what the Ambassador actually said about Fiji. Playing with words is more than semantics when they are changed, wrongly used, for a "cause", and repeated over and over again. This is called propaganda.
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