In comments on a previous post, my friend M. Leblanc thinks my opposition to hot dog diplomacy is misguided: It’s like this: the local embassy (in my case,
“„It’s like this: the local embassy (in my case, in Cairo) sets up a 4th of July celebration. There is American food (hot dogs, sodas, etc) provided for free to all who are invited, which includes any American citizen (you show your passport to get in) and invited guests, which are some business owners that do business with the embassy, and other diplomats from other countries’ embassies. Pretty much all of them. At least where I grew up, there was a certain amount of collegiality among diplomats from various embassies–they shared more with each other than they did with the local population (living away from home, beholden to a government far away, trying to raise kids in a foreign country and often sending their kids to the same schools).
“„For them to now rescind such invitations, to, basically, a cook-out, would be pretty ridiculous and pointlessly belligerent.