"We all envy him!"

President Putin, last seen worrying that Journalist Anna Politkovskaya's death would hurt his reputation, wants to be more like Moshe:

As the leaders prepared to leave, the microphone caught Mr Putin saying "greetings to your president".

The microphone then went dead, but journalist Andrei Kolesnikov told the BBC he heard the rest of the comment.

He said the president continued: "What a mighty man he turns out to be! He raped 10 women—I would never have expected this from him. He surprised us all—we all envy him!"

The lucky object of envy, of course, is Israeli Prez Moshe Katsav. A pal of Putin's explains away the whole misunderstanding:

A Kremlin spokesman admitted Mr Putin made a joke, but said it was not meant to be overheard.

Comments

[Pol]

and you thought Borat was satire?

[smacky]

“Russian is a very complicated language, sometimes it is very sensitive from the point of view of phrasing.

“I don’t think that the proper translation is able to reflect the meaning of the joke.”

Uh huh.

*watching fierce backpedaling with little interest*

[mediageek]

That’s really fucked up.

[a]

It’s obviously anti-Semitism.

[cynical bastard]

He was actually speaking Russian, and, based on the original statement, the translation above is an accurate one. Still, the final remark regarding envy is disputable (BBC has it as a fact, others do not). Not that I am a big fan of Mr. Putin (an old Gestapo… I mean, KGB man), but in the interests of fairness to the lower form of politician scum…

Then again, information wars, do I even need to go into that?

[Vitaliy]

This is bad joke, but you make only good joke?

[MainstreamMan]

The translation of humor is the most difficult of all translation tasks. It seems to me this is a verion of a “not” joke.

He is a powerful man (not, he’s a weak rapist).
We all envy him (not, we wouldn’t want to deal with the investigation).

I also imagine it is a power thing. Putting statements about how he is a powerful man in a greeting, then turning it on his rape charges is a pretty viscious dig that indicates it will be used in the next political negotiation.

Or Putin’s just a viscious thug who thinks raping women is the same as getting laid.

Tough call.