Why Is the UN Dysfunctional? Maybe Because Everyone's Drunk

By Greg Scoblete
March 05, 2013

UN negotiators get scolded for being drunk all the time.

This really happened:

'At a General Assembly budget committee meeting on Monday, the United States ambassador for management and reform at the UN stood up to scold his colleagues for always showing up drunk to negotiations. "There has always been a good and responsible tradition of a bit of alcohol improving a negotiation, but we're not talking about a delegate having a nip at the bar," said Joseph "The Fun Police" Torsella. "We make the modest proposal that the negotiating rooms should in future be an inebriation-free zone."'

If Torsella sounds like a buzz kill (or a Buzz Killington), he's evidently responding to a real problem. The AFP reports that some negotiators were showing up "falling down drunk" and too intoxicated to work at all.

(AP Photo; Ed Note: Not the UN, but close!)

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