Tone deaf embassy missing big picture in Ireland

Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 10:39 AM

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It's almost impossible to convey how gloomy life in Ireland is this week. Tuesday was the worst because the imminent national economic collapse had to share the headlines with two horrific stories of fathers killing women and children. It was almost as if we were reaching an apocalyptic "end times."

Doom and gloom is everywhere – everywhere except the American embassy in Dublin. Believe me I don't want to make a big deal out of this because it's not a big deal. It's a small deal and it has to do with Twitter.

The American embassy has a twitter account (@usembassydublin). I thought they'd abandoned it because it went silent in June. Silent until it sparked to life again on Tuesday. Since then the embassy has posted four tweets:

Press briefing by President #Obama Aboard Air Force One: "We are going to have to step up our game." {Nov 16}
Americans help rebuild #Haiti #libraries. {Nov 16}
International enrollment in U.S. colleges reaches all-time high. {Nov 17}
Interfaith dialogue strengthens faith and tolerance. {Nov 18}

Obviously there is nothing wrong with those statements. It's the tone that's wrong, wrong for this week (or as the Irish say – "for the week that's in it.")

A friendly nation is facing a dark moment, an existential crisis and the United States embassy in that country is sending out notices about how many Chinese students are opting for the University of Nebraska. It's like walking down the street and running into a neighbor whose wife is deathly ill and bragging about your kid getting 1400 on the SAT's. It was like whoever sent out the tweets from the embassy wasn't even living here.

I know I can be too sensitive to this sort of thing. Any immigrant probably has these feelings: I am an unofficial ambassador for America and the least I expect is that the official representatives will represent the United States with dignity, decorum, respect and sensitivity. At a minimum these tweets are insensitive.

Why not a tweet about President Obama's discussions on the Irish debt crisis, which are scheduled for this weekend. That would have at least demonstrated that the folks in the fortress that doubles as the embassy are not totally unaware of what's happening outside their gates.

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6 comments

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maloney | Nov 19, 2010, 12:26 PM EST

bogside...don't look at the smile. Watch the hands, holding the knife, soon to be plunged in your back.

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TheYank | Nov 19, 2010, 05:59 AM EST

bogsidebunny,

Even naive liberals can be friendly, no? Some of my best friends are naive liberals. :-)

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bogsidebunny | Nov 19, 2010, 03:13 AM EST

"A friendly nation"????? Friendly to who? Palestine and their Hamas killer thugs? Yank, you're living in a naive Liberal dreamland.

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maloney | Nov 18, 2010, 05:54 PM EST

You may be right AJ but it brings to mind that after the Fort Hood shooting rampage by a muslim soldier, the first time the President, obama spoke to the American people, he was giving shout outs. obama is a real class act.

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TheYank | Nov 18, 2010, 03:41 PM EST

You know, Ajreaper, you're probably right. They're probably generated by some automated service run out of the Dept of State. There has to be some explanation because they're just too disconnected from the reality here at the moment.

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Ajreaper | Nov 18, 2010, 12:11 PM EST

Yank is it possible these are sent out elsewhere to the Twitter accounts of perhaps all the U.S. embassy's? They seem very generic in nature and certainly have nothing to do with anything related to travel in Ireland or U.S. and Irish diplomatic relations or trade etc. They seem almost like- well we've not Tweeted anything in awhile so lets just throw some tweets out there.

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