Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Public Diplomacy and Nostalgie de la Boue



"We need an avalanche of unique American voices speaking about their beliefs and representing our country abroad. Our Peace Corps volunteers are those fulltime citizen diplomats. Even dressed in sandals or covered in mud, they have shown the best of America day in and day out to the people of almost 140 nations."

--Judith McHale, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

Consider this quotation: "The French have a deliciously helpful phrase for just about everything, and one of the best is nostalgie de la boue. Nostalgia for the mud, roughly meaning an artist's or a reader's fondness for slime, muck, sewage, degradation, treachery and perversion. It's a specialty of the comfy bourgeoisie, who yearn for the real and the raw as experienced through the lens of literature or cinema. As far as actually, ick, touching the mud ... no thank you."

Perhaps the next time Ms. McHale meets with her foreign counterparts in official ministries of culture/information -- or with the internet-savvy successor generation worldwide -- she should be covered in mud. Might be fun for all involved. Image from. See also

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