Por que no te callas - why don't you just shut up
Spoken by the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, to Hugo Chavez.
The thought is that this outburst may have been instrumental in costing Chavez his bid for lifetime absolute power in Venezuela.
Wretchard at
The Belmont Club links to
Tigerhawk and notices that one of his commenters had the following observation:
Students of Spanish may recall that there are two forms of address: the more formal usted, and the familiar tu. The fact that Juan Carlos said "por que no te callas" (using the tu form) added insult to injury. One head of state addressing another would almost always, universally, use "usted", so saying this with tu showed that Juan Carlos thinks of Chavez like an animal or an unruly child.
Heh...
Posted by DaveH at December 3, 2007 9:27 PM