“I’m familiar with your country; I love your country,”
Rep. Curt Clawson of Florida said during a recent congressional
hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
as he addressed Nisha Biswal and Arun Kumar.
“Anything I can do to make the relationship with India
better, I’m willing and enthusiastic about doing so.”
The Tea Party-backed businessman, elected to
Congress only a month earlier, followed up his friendly
greeting with a request: “Just as your capital is welcome
here to produce good-paying jobs in the U.S., I’d like our
capital to be welcome there. I ask cooperation and commitment
and priority from your government in so doing.
Can I have that?”
Nothing unusual about his words, except for one
important detail: Biswal and Kumar are Indian-Americans
who have senior positions in the U.S. State Department
and Commerce Department respectively.
“I think your question is to the
Indian government,” Biswal said.
“We certainly share your sentiment,
and we certainly will advocate
that on behalf of the U.S.”
Both Biswal and Kumar were
born in India, but it was nevertheless
an embarrassing mistake.
Had Clawson been facing a
pair of Italian-Americans or German-Americans, would he have
assumed they were anything but US citizens?
He later apologized in a statement to USA Today: “I
made a mistake in speaking before being fully briefed
and I apologize. I’m a quick study, but in this case I shot
an air ball.”
[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips and more.]