On wikileaks
In a half-remembered management book of the 1990s, and who knows, maybe in real life, they have a tradition in some Japanese companies of having the big boss take all the middle managers out to a bar, and get them blind drunk. The social role of this ritual is that all the junior types tell their superiors exactly what they think of them, and under pain of the severest loss of face, the manager is not allowed to get annoyed or to hold it against them or ever mention again what Mr Watanabe said while he was three sheets in the wind. So the lower ranks blow off stress, and the upper ranks discover home truths that they would never otherwise find out in the absurdly deferential culture of Western management book pictures of Japanese corporations.
I would suspect that this is how the international diplomatic corps is going to end up managing the putative embarrassment of the US cable leaks. I rather think a lot of them will be secretly quite pleased about it. They might make it an annual affair, to kick off the Christmas party season.
I think that's better described as "something that occasionally happens" than a "tradition." Love those Japan management books...
ReplyDeleteExcept in this case, it's the big boss that's done all the liquored-up babbling, and from middle management we've got exactly the sort of strenuous, shamefaced bootlicking you'd expect, e.g. "Oh gawrsh, Boss Unca Sam, we shore do hate us some Iran, too, yessir".
ReplyDeleteThe day after a night like that, I'd expect middle management to make itself scarce as the boss thrashes around looking for someone to blame for the hangover.
More like a mashup of "Hit him, I'll hold your coat" and "Leave him, he's not worth it..."
ReplyDeleteThey might make it an annual affair, to kick off the Christmas party season.
ReplyDeleteI very much suspect that this actually happens at the diplomats' Christmas parties, a bit like the Great War footy truce, except with Macallan 18.
Obligatory Bismarck anecdote: Part of his diplomatic training was to guzzle large amounts of champagne with his fellow trainees and see what they could get each other to sign up to.
ReplyDelete(Other Bismarck champagne fact: he was very fond of a black velvet.)
This theory also explains what Sarah Palin meant when she said that Julian Assange should be chased down like Osama bin Laden.
ReplyDeleteCall me naive, but I would've expected the leaks to prompt some kind of discussion on the merits of bombing counties you're not actually at war with. I was under the impression that journos had previously known that the USAF was bombing Cambodia, for instance, but that the confirmation as seen as a bit of a of scandal.
ReplyDeleteI guess we're past the point where that kind of thing is controvesial.
Surely the fact that the US is bombing Yemen and Pakistan is well-know to the point of 'not even secret under the crazy military definition of secret'?
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