Tom Malinowski: “When people sometimes ask me to name an unusual fun fact about myself, something that no one would quite believe would…”

“When people sometimes ask me to name an unusual fun fact about myself, something that no one would quite believe would be true, I sometimes say that at a younger point in my life I had a chance to write and negotiate a four act parody performance of ``West Side Story'' with the Russian Government. I owe that experience to Secretary Madeleine Albright. I was a young speech writer at the State Department when she became Secretary of State. I was so thrilled to have that opportunity because here I was an immigrant from Poland when it was a Communist country. Our new Secretary of State was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, leaving that country under duress with her family when it became a Communist country. I felt a kinship with this extraordinary American, a sense that we saw the world in similar terms. I saw her in every part of the world stand up for our country, for our values, for our interest. I saw her face down dictators and comfort their victims. I saw her sense of fun. In 1997, we were on our way to a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, in Malaysia, and we learned a couple of days in advance that there was a tradition that every delegation would put on a skit at the end of this diplomatic meeting, something very, very unusual. We heard, furthermore, that the United States had developed a reputation for really sucking at the skit. That was not acceptable to Madeleine Albright.…”