Chelsea Handler says she would not bother interviewing Melania Trump because "She can barely speak English!" Let's unpack this dog turd, shall we?
First, Melania speaks five languages: her native Slovene, plus French, Italian, German, and...English. Now, this may sound extravagant to Americans who struggle (not always successfully) with one language, but I know as a matter fact this kind of linguistic virtuosity is very common in Europe, especially among the small nations of central and eastern Europe.
For example, my father spoke five Languages: his native Romanian, plus French, Italian, German, and English. Yiddish might be a sixth language, but he did not speak it well. Ok, my father was a very well educated man, so consider my mother, a brilliant woman but with only seven formal grades of education. She spoke: her native Yiddish, plus Romanian, French, and English. Four languages.
My parents were not unique. In Amsterdam I watched the cafe manager speak English, German, and French to his customers, as required, and he was bantering extensively, not just settling the bill. As I was paying my bill and expressing my admiration, he shrugged his shoulders and nonchalantly explained that "nobody comes to Holland speaking Dutch".
At a restaurant that straddled the Franco-Belgian border, I watched a young waitress do exactly the same thing, as she moved from table to table. I did not have a chance to express my admiration to her, but I already knew the explanation.
Pretty much everybody in all of Europe (with the possible exception of the French, who are as linguistically chauvinistic as the English), speaks one or three of the major world languages: English, French, and German, and very commonly two or three of the minor languages. For example, I encountered Hungarian speakers in Romania and Romanian speakers in Jugoslavia. In Paris, I even encountered Romanian speaking Greeks (sic!). Thessaloniki, you see. Lithuanians speak Polish, Scandinavians speak German and English, and so on.
I could go on just from my own experience, but on the basic proposition it would be strange if Melania did not speak several languages with credible fluency, especially the world's Lingua Franca, English, and especially since she has been living in the U.S. at least since 2001.
So the basic conclusion is inescapable: Chelsea Handler is malicious and stupid. What makes Chelsea Handler's stupid assertion interesting to me is that I have seen this sort of thing before.
In the long and bitter debate about Israel and her Muslim neighbors, people who tend to be sympathetic to the Arabs despise Bernard Lewis. Now, this is an odd thing, that should be explored another time. Until his retirement a few years ago, Bernard Lewis was the pre-eminent scholar of Islam and the Near East. For his work, he had full mastery of Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, classical Turkish, and he was a fluent speaker of modern Turkish. Lewis had more than a nodding acquaintance with Aramaic. He is a gifted man. (Wikipedia says he is still alive at age 100. May he live to 120.)
It came to pass that I was in debate with a man of the Left (let's call him Thomas), a scholar poseur, sympathetic to the Arab cause. In discussing some question of fact, I referred to Bernard Lewis. Thomas dismissed Lewis with a wave of the hand, saying his opinions are worthless in such matters since he doesn't even speak Arabic.
Friends, you have to think about this for a moment. Here is what could not have happened: Thomas never investigated the life of Bernard Lewis or came to know him, or his work, in any way. Either someone simply told Thomas that Lewis did not speak Arabic, and we now have an isnad of lies, or Thomas simply made up his assertion.
If Thomas had simply made up his false assertion, then he is an asshole. This is the very definition of intellectual dishonesty. If Thomas accepted this false fact on somebody else's authority, then Thomas is a very poor scholar, indeed. Not only was he accepting an outrageous and incredible assertion about a recognized scholar without checking sources, he was not even aware that it is not possible to do any scholarship on the "Near East" without the mastery of at least three difficult languages: Persian, Arabic, and Turkish. With considerable justification, some would include Hebrew and Aramaic in that list. So, yeah, Near Eastern scholarship is really difficult, which is why not many people do it (well).
The point is that somebody, Thomas or someone else, made up the slander that Bernard Lewis does not know Arabic. Why on earth would anyone make up such a thing? To discredit Lewis, of course!
For the Left, any lie will do to discredit the opposition. I saw this first hand with Bernard Lewis, and we are seeing it first hand with Melania Trump and the contemptible Chelsea Handler.
BTW, Melania and I have something in common. She once lived in the Slovenian city of Ljubljana, on her way to becoming First Lady of the United States. I once at a plate of spaghetti Bolognese there.
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