Sunday, April 23, 2006

The art of teasing

China's president Hu Jintao has given Bush Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and a lot of my friends immediately decided that it was a great way to tease Bush.

Regardless whether Hu is in fact making fun of Bush or not, I found the very idea quite strange. If I were doing something (say, baking) and somebody gave me a book on how to do it better, I certainly would not take it as teasing. In fact I would be quite pleased.

Bush got a fancy bilingual edition printed on silk, too. I'd love to have one of those too, but I guess you have to start a real war in order for people to start giving you really nice editions.

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