Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life.......  dave dorkin <ddorkin1@yahoo.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">At one point when I was living in Italy, I went to look into freelance work at the NY Times bureau in Rome. The "correspondant," who spoke virtually no Italian, also covered the South of France, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and much of North Africa (and did not speak any of those related languages of course). American correspondants are legendary for their occasional trips to the press association where they are "informed" by the local journalists (in addition to the embassy as Doug mentions). Ignorant and lazy. Dave --- Doug Henwood <DHENWOOD@PANIX.COM>wrote: The NY Times has had only a handful of fluent > Russian speakers in its Moscow bureau for years & years, and Moscow has long been an important assignment. I think the reason is that they don't care what ordinary people think or talk about - all that matters is what the loca l elite (which speaks English) and the U.S. embassy thinks. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com</BLOCKQUOTE> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/platinum/evt=8162/*http://platinum.yahoo.com/splash.html">Yahoo! Platinum</a> - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/platinum/evt=8162/*http://platinum.yahoo.com/splash.html">live on your desktop</a>!