If you are looking for something good and positive to watch on television on January 20th to avoid ‘you-know-what’ then you really could no better to watch the Netflix series I Am The Ambassador to remind you at least how remarkable our Diplomatic service is overseas. In an unprecedented move the PEOTUS has decreed that all US Ambassadors must resign with immediate effect the very hour he takes Office. It is not part of any masterplan to suddenly install his own appointees as that as always will take several months, it is purely an act of petty vindictiveness on the part of the Administration that sadly we are now going to have to get used too.
Rufus Gifford is the last of a dying breed ….. well anyway for the next four years …. as he is one of the six openly gay Ambassadors appointed by President Obama. As the highly successful US Ambassador to Denmark since 2013, Gifford also took on an unofficial of role of Reality TV star when a fly-on-wall documentary about his life became such a smash hit, it even spawned a second series. In it we see Gifford not just undertaking an surprisingly wide range of formal and very casual events in order to foster good relations between the two countries, but we also got to see his personal life including his marriage in Copenhagen Town Hall to Dr Stephen DeVincent a Provincetown veterinarian.
I Am The Ambassador doesn’t just de-mystify how an Embassy and its officials work, but it clearly shows you how everyone in the Obama Administration vastly improved the standing of the US throughout the world. P.S. Not in the film ….on January 16, 2017, Gifford was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog by Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark for his meritorious service to the Kingdom of Denmark.
Labels: 2017, culture, politics, Rufus Gifford
