blogger interrupted

When you spend over a year working on democracy in Armenia, this kind of crap tends to grab your attention.  Apparently, David Plouffe was recently paid $50,000 to speak at some ludicrous “university” in Baku.  Cue controversy!

This is a charming feature of post soviet dictatorships like Azerbaijan’s – clumsily throwing huge sums around to basically star fuck their way to a little positive PR to balance the whole dictatorship thing.  They couldn’t get Jessica Alba, so they got David Plouffe.  Great success!  It recently happened in Cleveland.  

Well, like all things Azerbaijan, Armenians pay attention.  Close attention.  Most people like Plouffe would walk into this pissing match completely unaware of the reality, which immediately then bites them in the ass.

Though Armenian-American leaders assert that Plouffe’s mysterious trip did not dampen their hopes for legislative and diplomatic victories under Obama, they admit it prompted a flurry of nervous phone calls with activists and congressional allies.

These leaders question Plouffe’s judgment, but they reserved most of their scorn for Azerbaijan, which they charged was trying to skirt lobbying laws by buttering up Plouffe to gain a toehold in the White House.

“It seems to me a pretty sad effort on the part of Azerbaijan to try to curry favor and by using clever D.C. back-channel tactics to accomplish what they couldn’t accomplish during the election,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, which endorsed Obama.

What to do?  Well, Plouffe gets the last laugh. He takes the $50k, and gives it to the one democracy NGO that would enrage Azeris the most – my former employer.

After Plouffe learned that the group paying for the speech – held at a relatively small private university that boasted of presenting him “a memory gift” – had close ties to the Azerbaijani government, he decided to donate the fee to the U.S.-based nonprofit National Democratic Institute.

Snap!!!!  Nice one, David.  Next time, though, you might want to ask around before you take a fee from a post-soviet government.  Plenty of people could advise you on such ham handedness….it’s pretty standard.