Sorority hazing? Costume party? Youthful indiscretion? What?
RSS- Supreme Court oral arguments to be heard on April 25 about presidential immunity for official acts
- Nasa’s Voyager-1 sends usable data from deep space
- The Wondrous Oak
- Three Seas Summit: Vilnius 2024
- Tit for tat until it all goes boom
- Deadly H5N1 avian influenza strain detected on mainland Antarctica
- “BYD is launching its next-gen Blade EV battery soon with more range and even lower cost”
- Iran launches air attacks on Israel
- ISW on the developing Ukrainian defense industrial base and Russias strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure
- Britain? Kaput! By Walrus.
Authentic Soviet and GDR military hats were being sold all over Germany in the early 90s, especially in Berlin out of the back of Ladas and Trabis. I have several along with an assortment of Lenin pins and a Hero of Chernobyl medal. I even have a blue/white striped wife beater T-shirt. I’m sure that pink knockoff came out shortly after that.
Isn’t that Lavrov’s hand around her neck ?
Well, she looks natural. Something like the grand daughter of a Chekist maybe.
None of the above. She was spokesperson for the Dept. of State at the time. This was in 2014. The hat was apparently gifted to her by Lavrov, et al.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/12/01/jen-psaki-hammer-and-sickle-russia-joe-biden/
She was a well-paid, highly placed U.S. government employee at the time. You could chalk it up to ignorance (though not of the youthful type), but from what I’ve seen of her behavior as Press Sec, she seems a malevolent creature with a bent soul, who harbors serious animosity towards the United States and its people.
My armchair psychological take on her is that she was just smart enough in school to think she is the smartest person in the room (though not actually so) and was not well-liked by her classmates, probably for being the type of girl who would ask the teacher what the weekend homework assignment was at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon, when the rest of the class just wanted two days to go be free, normal children.
After 20 years in the publishing business I gave up the “high life” and became a H.S. teacher. Yesss, there are kids like Psaki. When I intended to give the class a weekend off, there she was, asking for weekend work. She is the kid who knew 80% of an issue, but nothing about life. BTW, I saw that picture of her, Lavrov, and Kerry shortly after it was taken and published on the web. It’s real.
Why is the hat a pastel pink? LGBT? Odd
AK,
I am astounded that she was a public servant working for the state department already when she was wearing that cap. I can understand dressing up like that for a college party, why would anybody with a brain wear a cap with the Soviet Union badge while being a US state department spokesperson??
Fortunately the German government does not have a similar tradition of handing out old memorabilia caps to gullible foreign junior spokespeople.
Imagine the photo-ops that this would enable…
The pink Ushanka makes me think this is a joke/affectation. “I’m going to take something that is an iconic bad-guy accessory and make it cutsey”; “Springtime for Hitler” in “The Producers” with the camp Hitler is the best execution of it.
One of the funniest scenes ever made.
The only better one that I know of is the “Putting on the Ritz” song-and-dance in Young Frankenstein.
Context:
https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/422681382314201088
It comes from this all-smiles group photo from sometime in the past of Sergey Lavrov, Psaki, a blonde woman whose name I do not know, and John Kerry–
https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/jen-psaki-cnn-russia.jpg
robert willman
Is this photoshopped?
I did not know for sure that it was genuine, but I had seen it at one or more other sites previously, and it seemed to be. But Barbara Ann found the verification.
It is real… here is another:
https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/422681382314201088
Apparently they had a tradition of giving odd gifts to one another, Lavrov got some oddly shaped potatoes or something like that.
The blonde woman is the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova. As for the photoshopped question, it’s doubtful. There are other images out there taken from different angles of the same group pose.
If you Google Maria Zakharova you’ll find it is not her in this picture.
Well, to be fair, Kerry wouldn’t wear it lest it ruin his coiffure.
So it’s either offend the gift-giver or take one for the team.
The same spirit of fun and humor that saw The Red Army Choir sing “Sweet Home Alabama”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrg0X9H6FGU
In the same spirit, once tried to buy a KGB presentation watch for my Godfather – one of the founders of ASIO.
Indeed, Psaki, due her age, has not probably the deep hatred other old curmudgeons hold on anything related to communism.
She simply does her work, more or less succesfully, but definitely in a way more polite way than other spokespersons previously.
The woman shows herself always gentle, in spike of having to lie all the way…
The pink hat fits very welll with her red hair and absolutely white skin.
She looks like a teen there…I did not know she was so tiny…
Humor is always commendable, although not bad understood as it is the way of Kamala harris who uses it as a defense…
The pic is from January 2014 in Geneva it seems. Here is the wider shot, the thumb is Lavrov’s and Maria Zakharova and John Kerry are in there too. Just a month before the Maidan Revolution – another age. Btw I used tineye.com to sleuth this out, very useful tool.
https://news.am/eng/news/189019.html
Here is the contemporary tweet (January 2014) from @StateDeptSpox
https://twitter.com/StateDeptSpox/status/422672066572468224
I almost bought a Stahlhelm (German WW2 combat helmet) at a garage sale.
Boy am I glad I didn’t take a selfie of myself trying it on and upload it to social media. I would have been like a fool as well.
All
Apparently Lavrov gave her the pink thing with the hammer and sickle on it and she was dumb enough to wear it while someone took her picture. Incredible!
Obama in full mufti came back to haunt him as well.
A plague of many of these foreign leader gatherings – dressing up in the host country’s “traditional” dress for group photos – intended to be a secretly contrived subjugation? Not unlike anal covid swabs inflicted by China on apparently only US visitors.
A clever idea by Lavrov to test her intelligence.
Obviously too polite to refuse a gift.
And, let’s face it, would she really want to offend Lavrov?
The smart thing to do would have been politely accepting the gift without wearing it or showing the badge to the camera during the photo-op.
Probably, but if you boss is standing right next to you and urging you to put it on then what’s an underling to do?
Plus Lavrov has always struck me as possessing a wicked sense of humour, so he would certainly be urging her to try it for size.
(if you want an intro to his style of humour check out a comment he once made about US obsession with Pussy Riot. Hi-larious).
I once caused a stir in a Khabarovsk Intourist hotel elevator in Russia Far East the year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when I cinched my newly purchased Mongolian cashmere sweater with a Soviet army logo brass-buckled belt I picked up at some street stall for firesale prices.
Several older Russian men in the elevator glared, gestured and murmured to each other – what they were saying was unknown. With my capitalist American insouciance at the time, I treated my display of this former Soviet embellishment as my own inside joke not having any sensibilities about what these former Soviets might have felt about this.
How far the mighty had fallen to become a mere fashion accessory now. Not unlike Sucki’s pink fuzzy hat and grin.
But since these Russian gentlemen were skulking about the Intourist Hotel, I suspected they too were looking for some deals to make in the “new” post-Soviet Russia. The Japanese had already arrived and were very ready to talk business.
Including building a decent business hotel to finally put the shabby Intourist hotel monopoly out of its well earned misery. Two people could not be in the same Intourist hotel room at the same time here with open suitcases, without having to walk on top of the beds to move around the room.
There is, or was, a statue of Lenin inside a Las Vegas Casino. Saw it when SWMBO and I did the LV marathon in 95 (walking not running).
Definitely not an attempt at capitalist/communist cooperation, just a marketing gimmick for vodka. I heard they cut off the head after someone complained.
Is it still there?
OT – great photos and video – Ernest Shakleton’s Endurance has been found – 10,000 meters down under Antarctic’s Waddell Sea, not far off from the original recorded coordinates. Over one hundred years later after it sunk – in frozen perfection.
https://twitter.com/i/events/1501492291688620035
I had bought a hat just like that off Amazon, but black. I promptly removed the detachable Soviet badge. It’s very warm & easier to maintain than a tobbogan. Goes good w/ drinking vodka.
One design drawback, the ear flaps tie up at the top with a ribbon just like hers. A better way would be with snap buttons.
Speaking of apparel, even though wintry conditions prevail on the battlefields in Ukraine, its president continues to sport a khaki t-shirt in studio appearances. I suppose he’s trying to burnish the epithet “Churchill In A T-Shirt”.
Here you go,
https://www.ushanka.com/
MG
I have a fur hat made in Canada. Made of Muskrat.
Thanks.
https://www.secretsoftheeasternshore.com/quote-of-the-day-muskrat-recipes-1943/
I had never thought about eating muskrat. I cooked full time for 13 years, never had muskrat on the menu. Maybe we should have.
PS: EO, roux for gravy
MG
Hat, not dinner.
Yeah, but folks are saying it’s good eating.
I was in MS after Hurricane Katrina. I sat and talked with an older gentleman and he told me that possum was very good eating. I have not had the chance to try it.
MG
Possum is not muskrat… We Southerners eat a lot of strange stuff.
I know.
The hammer and sickle insignia dates back to the era when the Left considered communist Russia the good guys.
A benevolent king?
Real communism hasn’t been tried, though Biden, Obama’s 3rd term, is sure giving it a try.
All
Sakharova is a much better-looking woman.
A rusty roof equals a wet basement
Speaking of gifts. Breitbart website is offering a viewing of the documentary “Hating Breitbart” in honor of the 10th anniversary of his very untimely death,
https://www.breitbart.com/hatingbreitbart/?utm_source=actioncenter
Highly recommended, either through them or any other means: “Hating Breitbart” – we just watched this again before this offer came out and it remains as fresh and inspiring as the day it was first released. .
However, unsettling for several things: (1) how many of the issues Andrew Breitbart was talking about and exposing 10 years ago are still with us – he nailed the role of Big Media. Second (2) is how far the Breitbart website strayed from the founder Andrew Breitbart himself – “go to the fire” was his motto.
Actually, there was a third unsettling thing – was that really “Ray Epps” of Jan 6 fame dressed up as the Nazi logo intruder at one of the early Tea Party rallies – was I seeing things? This person was firmly asked to leave because this fake “Nazi’s” sole intent was to give the Tea Party a bad name.
See the Tea Party are all racists and white supremacists- here is our proof – a fake plant. Sounds like a very familiar MO 10 years later on Jan 6.