Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently in the midst of a whirlwind tour of Africa that takes her through seven nations in eleven days. “Africa?” you may be thinking. “Isn’t that the continent where progress on numerous social, economic, and political ailments has been frustratingly elusive? That must be quite a difficult, depressing trip for her.” If that is indeed what you were thinking, you couldn’t be more ignorant. Because Hillary has proven herself to be a special kind of secretary of State, one whose diplomacy utilizes gregariousness and levity as much as carrots and sticks. Accordingly, during a speech at an economic forum, Hillary joked about the attention Americans pay to her hairstyle. “My hairdos have been the subject of Ph.D. theses, so I want everybody to know that I got a good one in Nairobi,” she said. At a town hall at the University of Nairobi, she shared a laugh about the dowry of goats and cows a Kenyan man offered for the hand of Chelsea Clinton. And, as this clip from Kenyan television attests, she is more than willing to boogie down … way down.
