Take it Easy, Mike

This morning I was watching the news and the big subject was, naturally, the crash landing of the US Airways flight into the Hudson. I normally like Mike Bloomberg; he seems intelligent and rational even when it is not immediately advantageous politically. For some reason, however, he decided to speak Spanish in the press conference this morning.

I like how he starts out by saying, "..to help wrap up for those who speak Spanish easier to understand." What follows is him butchering the accent. I am not a fluent speaker, but I know a gringo accent when I see one. He has a worse accent than most English people, and they sound terrible when they speak Spanish. It is also a pointless exercise as virtually any Spanish language channel will have translators who can translate everything that he has said virtually instantaneously. How much does he hope to get across in the 40 seconds that he speaks Spanish? Is his Spanish that good that he can summarize an entire conference in just 40 seconds? Or have I just watched a half an hour worth of something that could be summarized in 40 seconds.