Bachmann mispronounces Kazakhstan; in Parliament, she’d be flayed

In Congress, Rep. Michele Bachmann can get away with mispronouncing Kazakhstan as “Ka-ZAK-i-stan” — as she did yesterday during her questioning of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (video, 2:25). In the United Kingdom’s Parliament, they eat you alive for that. Perhaps Bachmann, who fancies herself a budding foreign correspondent, thought that by mispronouncing the name of a foreign land she would provide a distraction from her earlier misreading of her own country’s Constitution.

Or perhaps she thought that cap-and-trade rules allow members of Congress to add a syllable to a foreign country’s name as long as they remove a syllable from another word, as she did in committee — and again later on FOX-TV (video) — when she said “jetissing” for ”jettisoning.”

Or perhaps she was laying a sophisticated trap for Geithner — the kind of double-game they play in the United Kingdom’s Parliament, until you don’t know who’s been had and who simply doesn’t know how to pronounce “Kazakhstan.”

From Parliament, Oct. 23, 2006:

Rob Marris: Does not the wording of amendment No. 201 fall into the very trap that the hon. Gentleman gave of the difficulty of proving a negative in terms of the capital of Kazakistan—or whatever it is called? It would require the individual to prove a negative.

Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman would be expected to know how to pronounce Kazakhstan, even if he does not know its capital or how to spell it. …

Rob Marris: …I have to tell the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) that he has been had in the Chamber — by me. Of course, I know how to pronounce Kazakhstan. When, during my earlier intervention, I indicated that I might not, the hon. Gentleman immediately said that I ought to know how to pronounce it.

Tim Loughton: Quite right.

Rob Marris: Exactly. But in my intervention I did not intend to seek to indicate to the House that I did not know how to pronounce Kazakhstan, which is precisely the problem with the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. That light-hearted example shows that, if the amendment were accepted, I would get off scot-free from the charge of not knowing how to pronounce Kazakhstan. He quite reasonably points out that I should be expected to know how to pronounce Kazakhstan. I do know; he has been had. But it was to make the point that his amendment will create, inadvertently — I stress that word for him — a loophole that I am sure he and his colleagues do not want to create.

Anne Main: The hon. Gentleman freely admitted that he did not know how to pronounce Kazakhstan even though he had heard the pronunciation at least twice. That is not intent but a sure-fire case of not paying attention —

The topic of the debate was actually school policy toward pedophiles … as I said, in Parliament they play sophisticated double games.

For clarity, then, here is the Kazakhstan’s faux national anthem, from the movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”: