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Monday, June 9th, 2003
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9:53p - Hillary Clinton, meet King Mswati III
On my way to the escalator at the beginning of my break I picked up a copy of Hillary Clinton's new book and turned to the index. I, like most of the people who picked up the book, turned toward the entry "Lewinsky, Monica" to see just how much of a "sell a sanitized version of your marital problems in exchange for campaign contributions from people who don't necessarily like you" tendency the book has. I didn't make it to that entry though, because I was distracted by a far more interesting entry: Mswati III, King of Swaziland. Senator Clinton was talking about how, in meetings with foreign heads of state and diplomats, she had to avoid being seen with people like Fidel Castro (because the New York Post and Miami Herald would immediately take photographs of them together) and instead focus on interesting conversations with people like the king in question.
Mswati III is an absolute monarch of a type that is now rare in this world. He also holds some opinions on women's rights that I don't think the former First Lady would like to hear about. Recently the king, a husband of nine wives chosen without being consulted, made a pronouncement that all the world's ills result from women wearing trousers. More importantly, the king's views are law: in Swaziland, women are technically minors and cannot own property or enter legally-binding contracts.
I want to hear their conversation.
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