2023-09-12 16:09:00
“Good evening everyone. It’s evening, isn’t it?’ he jokingly introduced a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the president moved from the G20 summit in New Delhi – that is, he flew forward an hour and a half. “It’s interesting, a trip around the world in five days, don’t you think?” He flew to India via Europe, his Boeing Air Force One refueled during a stopover at the American Ramstein base in Germany.
And he immediately tried another joke: “One of the co-workers was saying, ‘Remember the famous song Good Morning Vietnam?’ So good evening, Vietnam,” he greeted a second time. Good morning, Vietnam not a song, however, but a movie starring Robin Williams as a radio DJ who broadcasts for American soldiers.
The lost president
As the official record shows, the tone of the entire press conference was relaxed. The BBC news reporter greeted with a polite, “How are you feeling?” “OK, thanks. These five-day round-the-world trips are no problem,” assured Biden that he was joking at first – while the journalist continued on his relaxed note with a dry British “let me remind you that it is indeed evening”.
However, the freshness began to wear off during the 26-minute press conference. Especially when answering the AFP reporter’s question about how much Biden is worried about the lack of consensus of the G20 states on limiting fossil fuels. The president assured that the US would honor its climate commitments, albeit with a margin, after which he mentioned several specific examples from the past and present… And then he began to get lost in his long-winded answer.
“My brother likes famous movie quotes that he always quotes. They include a film about John Wayne. An Indian scout is trying to get the Apaches – I think they were Apaches – or one of the great American tribes – back to the reservation. And they’re all in saddles, and there’s three or four Indians in headdresses, and the Union soldiers – and the Union soldiers basically say to the Indians, ‘Come with us, we’ll take care of you.’ And the Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union soldier and says, ‘He’s a lying soldier on a dog-faced pony.’ And John Wayne will look at him,” the president recalled a scene from a western.
“Well, there used to be a lot of lying dog-faced soldiers around global warming, but that’s not the case anymore. Suddenly, everyone realizes that this is a problem. And it’s not better if you see through it,” he tried to make a point. He must have realized that he hadn’t quite succeeded and looked down at the notes on the counter. “I’m just obeying my orders here,” he then spoke into the microphone. “Staff, is there anyone else I need to speak to?’ He then added that there were five questions in the plan, so on the instructions of his spokesperson, he also invited a Voice of America correspondent. She asked about negotiations with China, whose president sent only Premier Li Qiang to the summit.
He replied that Xi Jinping had other things to worry about at home and it didn’t matter too much. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed,” he was already trying to end the press conference. “What were you talking about?” was the insistent reporter; the president still tried to comply… “We talked about what we talked about in the conference overall. We talked about stability. We were talking about the Third World, the Southern Hemisphere having access to change… It wasn’t confrontational at all.” But the spokeswoman has already intervened: “This concludes the press conference. Thanks to all,” she didn’t let her boss answer further questions or rather shouts from journalists.
Favorite phrase
As the Slate server wrote, Biden has used the phrase about lying soldiers on ponies several times in recent years in public speeches (including in 2018 and 2020). Apparently he considers it a heavy caliber in his arsenal of insularity. However, when translated into Czech and without a period context, ponies and dog faces sound really crazy, so let’s break it down.
Pony does not necessarily mean a small pony in American westerns, so Indians often referred to all horses in English. And pony soldiers are, in short, soldiers on horses – the United States or Union Cavalry (blue coats) or the Canadian Mounted Police (red uniforms). Pony soldier does not sound as stupid to an American as “soldier on a pony” does to a Czech.
Just Pony Soldier is the name of a western from 1952 (filmed in Arizona, set in Canada), where a member of the Canadian Mounted Police negotiates with the Cree tribe (Cree, Nehiyonuk) on behalf of the Queen. “Pony soldier speaks the language of a rattlesnake,” the Imperial negotiator is rejected by the chief. However, the main role is not played by John Wayne, but by Tyrone Power.
Another image that probably sticks in the president’s mind involves the most famous western star. It’s a movie She had a yellow ribbon (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 1949) where Wayne portrayed the captain of the “bluecoats”. In the epilogue, the narrator refers to the cavalrymen as dog-faced soldiers. In the American slang of the time, the term dogface denoted an infantryman – an ordinary, simple soldier. The narrator did not mean this offensively, on the contrary, as a compliment to those men who, for not very high wages, endured hardships to spread civilization and the government of the United States to the Wild West.
Biden was six and ten, respectively, when these films hit theaters. His brother Frank was born only a year after the latter. “We have a plausible explanation for how the phrase ‘lying soldier on a dog-faced pony’ could become part of the private vocabulary of Joe Biden and his brother. Whether it was a great idea to use that phrase at a campaign event is, of course, an entirely different question.” Slate concluded.
Similarly, other American media, including the influential Washington Post, noticed the expression, Biden’s people must have noticed controversies before. It’s hard to say whether they drew his attention to them emphatically enough – the president clearly hasn’t learned his lesson and continues to brandish the confusing phrase. Will we hear it again during the campaign before the 2024 election, in which Biden wants to defend his post to rule until he is 86?
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