Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The Meeting

Today my MEP was called away to Poland for an urgent reason, even though he had an important meeting to attend. So that meant his assistant Weronica (in Polish Ws are Vs) and I got to attend in his stead and I got to take notes. Needless to say I was excited, and no matter what they talked about in this meeting I was going to be hanging on every terribly butchered English word spoken.

So I walked in and directly to my left there were a pile of sandwiches and an assortment of juices and waters, and yes everyone including interns could take them! So I grabbed a sandwich and a bottle of water and sat down at a chair that had a microphone and translation headset at it and proceeded to pass the time by talking to Weronica about how she got mugged by Gypsies while at the same time a bunch of important looking people in suits filed into the room.

Suddenly the meeting started and I started to take notes. Immediately the comedy of the EU Parliament started to come pouring out, one of the MEPs attending made a fool of himself by calling one of his fellow sponsors a member of his own party (the Socialist Party) when in fact he wasn't and guessing by the laughter and disgusted looks his party is no where near the same ideologically. The "forgetful" MEP tried to play it off as a joke, but he failed, miserably.

Now what ensued was pure comedy. The sponsoring MEPs invited a bunch of lobbyists and concerned citizens voicing that the purpose of the meeting was to "bring government and the people together." Right off the bat you knew that was bullshit because the remaining guests belonged to the EU Commission, the real target. The dialogue when something like this:

MEP: "We would like to thank the EU Commission for coming today to take part in todays session."

EU Commission: "Whatever"

MEP: "We would like to express are gratitude for your service and expertise"

EU Com: "Get to the point before I stop faking like I respect you"

MEP: "But we come here today because we feel that we can improve the Emergency Response Service so that it works flawlessly"

EU Com: "You want my job? You can have it" Flips over the table and storms out of the room.


It of course was much more cordial and consisted of dialogue loaded with rhetoric, spite and contempt. It was all good fun.

The rest of the meeting was not all that interesting except for the "Forgetful" MEP who kept insulting America and using bad information but I didn't mind because American politicians still call French Fries Freedom Fries because of the policies of France even though French Fries are Belgian. So all ignorance is forgiven.

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