Uncle Sam, with no subtlety please

FOURTEEN years at being a Harvard don certainly taught Robert D Blackwill the power of the thrust and parry — and some say that’s ...

FOURTEEN years at being a Harvard don certainly taught Robert D Blackwill the power of the thrust and parry — and some say that’s why he missed out on the art of public relations. So when a Foreign Service Inspector from the US State Department landed in New Delhi last year to score internal assessments given by embassy personnel about their boss, Blackwill was, kind of, busted. ‘‘Oh, but when I was at Harvard…’’ Blackwill’s buzzphrase is said to have often grated badly on the nerves of career diplomats who definitely didn’t like being woken up at the wee hours of the morning in the service of ambassador and country.

Oh yes, and then there were all those times at press conferences when a journalist dared disturb his longish train of thought and what followed was the verbal equivalent of the guillotine. You could stand up to him, of course, but get cut short again very quickly. If you knew you were right and maintained you were, you might get a Made-in-Roosevelt-House cookie. But for all these pains, a strong sense of self-assurance alongwith liberal doses of humour were pretty essential elements for surviving Blackwill.

To be fair to Blackwill, his professorial cap hardly allowed him the fawning hypocrisy that is often a necessary ingredient of life in feudal Asia. Hack or intellectual, you were given the same amount of time — two minutes — to say your piece at his infamous Round Tables.

Story continues below this ad

Certainly, there was no free lunch or dinner at Roosevelt House, so you had to come prepared to make intelligent conversation over soup and steak. Small talk over wine was so passe, you could do it anywhere. Especially with the French, especially after UNSC resolution 1483.

Not that the Blackwill-Wera Hildebrand duo didn’t, at least initially, try their hand at being friendly with Delhi’s Page 3 chatterati. At one early disaster, though, it was whispered that they had served burgers — or was it hot dogs — and butter popcorn and showed a Western film to their guests.

The social dos quickly stopped. The vacuum left by the previous incumbents to Roosevelt House, the Celestes, was quickly filled by other power envoys on the Delhi party scene. Blackwill and Hildebrand clearly preferred high-brow alternatives. Quality time together meant going to book laun-ches, or classical music functions.

And that’s how the last two years went by.

EXCLUSIVE: EC brings in feature to check misuse of identity to seek voter list deletions

Political Pulse3 hr ago

The Election Commission has launched a new 'e-sign' feature on its portal and app to prevent fraud. This comes after allegations of misuse of online voter deletion forms in Karnataka. The feature requires voters to verify their identity using their Aadhaar-linked phone numbers, reducing the possibility of fraud.

View all shorts

Live Blog