John Bolton: Got Memoir?



Got memoir? (image via browndailysqueal)

You know -- you just know -- that interim appointee UN Ambassador John Bolton is composing, on the fly, a memoir in his cro-magnon thick skull. His compositions will no doubt be as dissonant but not as brilliant as John Coltrane's late works. Cuffing our allies about the ears and gift-feeding the G-77 into the moist wings of The Chinese Dragon, Bolton traverses the Global theater in custom-made hobnail cowboy boots. (The Corsair expectorates angrily into the blogosphere) Bolton is, truly, a piece of fucking work; an unsavory slice of processed American cheese.

This memoir will be, to be sure, a hungry man's version of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's brilliant A Dangerous Place. The languiage may at times be a tad salty but the jist of it will be that John Bolton was "Our Guy." Intellectual lightweight Norm Coleman will be the first to deliver a congratulatory reach around. The New York Sun will promptly bestow enthusiastic editorial blow jobs. And swallow. The United Nations will, of course, be portrayed as a tangle of international burocracy, and Bolton, the straight-shooting grinder, shredding through the multilingual globalogna (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). The UN is the Okay Corral, a veritable creature cantina of Big International Evil, and Bolton, with his smoking Dillinger, The Last Cowboy.

Charmed, I'm sure. (Look of withering contempt)

The enemy here is sophistication and internationalism. It is evil, you know, to know more than one language, to be well read, to know the layout of several world capitols. Bolton, improvising the chapter headings as he goes along, Magoo-like, is the ideal. Them damn sophisticates!

The Old Gray Lady's Warren Hoge schools us:

" ... (D)iplomats focus particularly on an area with less evidence of instructions from Washington and more of Mr. Bolton�s personal touch, the mission that he has described as his priority: overhauling the institution�s discredited management. Envoys say he has in fact endangered that effort by alienating traditional allies. They say he combatively asserts American leadership, contests procedures at the mannerly, rules-bound United Nations and then shrugs off the organization when it does not follow his lead.

"Six ambassadors separately offered similar accounts of an incident in June that they said captured the situation. All were from nations in Europe, the Pacific and Latin America that consider themselves close allies of the United States, and they asked to speak anonymously in commenting on a fellow envoy.

"Mr. Bolton that day burst into a packed committee hall, produced a cordless microphone and began to lecture envoys from developing nations about their weakening of a proposal to tighten management of the United Nations, his chief goal.

"Gaveled to silence, he threw up his hands and said, 'Well, so much for trying something different.'

"It was not merely rude, the ambassadors said. One recalled that moments later, his BlackBerry flashed a message from another envoy working on management change. 'He just busted us apart,' it read."

Ah, the Bolton personal touch. While it has been known to tickle the editorial G-spot of the New York Sun, it might, not inconceivably blow the top 10 floors of the UN Building.