Let's play a word association game.
Quick: What word comes to mind when you think of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright?
Diplomat?
Cosmopolite?
Clintonista?
How about ... glamour?
No? Well, she'd like to change that.
Albright has a new book out that details -- seriously, y'all -- her wide collection of brooches and how they impacted her practice of diplomacy as Secretary of State.
She used them to send a sort of secret message to world leaders, according to this NPR story:
"As it turned out, there were just a lot of occasions to either commemorate a particular event or to signal how I felt," she says.There were balloons, butterflies and flowers to signify optimism and, when diplomatic talks were going slowly, crabs and turtles to indicate frustration.
After the Russians were caught tapping the State Department, Albright protested by wearing a pin with a giant bug on it. On days when Albright felt she had to do "a little stinging and deliver a tough message," she wore a wasp pin.
At one point, Russian leader Vladimir Putin told President Clinton that he knew what the mood of a meeting would be by looking at Albright's left shoulder. (Albright's pin with three monkeys, which she wore when discussing Chechnya, was meant to draw attention to the fact that Russia took a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" stance toward the Chechen atrocities.)
OK. Fair enough. So she found new uses for old things.
Not exactly.
She stocked up on brooches after wearing an antique snake pin to a meeting with Iraqi leaders after former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein referred to her as "a serpant."
But before you start freaking out that the Secretary of State went out and assembled an indulgent jewelry collection at taxpayers' expense, you should know that while it was likely taxpayer-funded, it was hardly extravagant.
Albright says It is mostly costume jewelry.
Um, I don't know what's worse: Wasting tax dollars on jewelry to try to get a point across that you won't make out loud, or wearing fake jewelry while you're representing the United States of America.
You can read Albright's book, "Read My Pins," and form your own opinion.
But the will set you back $40.
No word on how much costume jewelry will that buy.
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