Hu wears the pants?

While I was so drunk that I thought ordering the "Italian Night Club" at Jimmy John's was a good idea this weekend, Chinese President Hu Jintao was stateside, posing for the camera with President Bush and American business leaders. You were probably drunk, too. So what did you miss?\nI sobered up and read about his visit for you, but there was really nothing to it. Hu was in the United States for all of four days, one of which he spent with Bill Gates in Seattle touring a Boeing factory. They gave him a very nice baseball hat.\nThen, Hu got on an airplane and went to Washington to meet Bush, where they said nice things to each other, made sure not to make themselves uncomfortable and listened to a bluegrass band. They don't have many of those in China.\nAfter that, Hu got back on his airplane and went to Yale, where he donated books to the university library and gave a speech to a "packed audience," according the school's newspaper. Well, jeez, I'd hope so. If the president of China were coming to my house, I'd sell tickets.\nIt all went well. Except for those unfortunate, uncomfortable minutes on the White House lawn, where someone screwed up and gave Wen Yi Wang a press pass. She stood on a platform on the other side of the fence, and made a scene about the Chinese government's brutal crackdown on the Falun Gong movement. A "forced labor for reeducation" kind of brutal.\nIt wasn't good. Hu started to sweat and shift weight back and forth from one foot to another, like he gets when he needs a bathroom break and doesn't want to tell anybody -- you just know something's wrong. \nBut reason and civility were restored and the Secret Service grabbed Wang and hauled her out of vocal range. The U.S. government is charging her with harassing a foreign official, a federal misdemeanor that can cost you five grand and a six-month stay in the clink. \nI always miss the bigger picture, so I'm going to talk my way through it: This was Chairman Hu's first visit to the United States, and there were massive economic and trade issues at stake. China is quickly emerging as a rival to American influence throughout the world, and things needed to be addressed. They were obviously planning to address China's documented list of human rights abuses later so Wang needed to shut her mouth. \nThat must be it. She spoke out of turn.\nThe Chinese government puts dissidents in labor camps, and the American government puts Falun Gong activists in federal prison for reminding the rest of the world that China does things like that.\nThis must have been a one-time thing because America doesn't pander to top-down dictators becasue that's what we hear in State of the Union addresses and presidential campaigns. But while Bush was listening to bluegrass with Hu, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, whom she called "a good friend." The man rounded out Parade Magazine's annual "World's 10 Worst Dictators" list. State-run radio in his oil-rich country has declared him God.\nHu looked nice in his Boeing hat.