I’m watching the live feed of the Taylor trial happening in The Hague. I’m sitting at my hotel in Freetown, with a few Sierra Leonean staff, as a defense lawyer drags out what sounds like character assassination against someone I’ve never heard of (and possibly also against Mia Farrow?) in order to un-assassinate Campbell’s character.
We think. But we’re not actually sure what’s going on.
“There’s no way she’ll ever say she got a diamond from Taylor,” one of the women working here says. “But even if she did, then what?”
“They ask her to produce it,” says a guy on the staff. “She would have to hand it over to them, probably.”
This is the best we can do for finding a reason for the bizarre charade that’s happening on TV right now. Taylor’s accused of using diamonds to fuel the war. But all this seems to be about whether he gave Naomi diamonds as a gift. I suppose if she said yes, everyone would want to know if she sold them on his behalf or something, but this all seems a strung out.
My favorite moment is when the defense asked her about the diamonds. How many were there? “A few, maybe two or three.” What size were they? “They were small.” How small? “I’m not a stones expert.” But how small? “They were tiny, and dirty.”
Dirty? You don’t say.
Close runner up for favorite moment is this one, in which she says she responds to a report that she handed the diamonds over to some staff member or something of hers. A written document the defense reads out says this person was “horrified.” A judge interrupts.
“I’m interested in establishing whether [that person] was horrified.”
“He didn’t express horror to me.”
“You mean he was not disturbed by you handing him unprocessed diamonds?”
“No.”
Maybe he didn’t mind that they were so dirty?
But this has all drug on far too long, and we’re losing interest, even in Freetown. Everyone in this room is way more interested in watching Charles Taylor’s facial expressions and gestures, as he sits in the background of the shots of the talkative defense lawyer, than in Naomi herself.
“Does she even model any more?” someone asks.
We go back to what we were doing.
(It’s probably worth noting, so that I don’t get hauled before the Special Court, that I’m typing the quotes as I’m watching the TV, and you might want to check all this against a transcript or something, if this blog post is the kind of thing that really gets you going. And if it is, send me an email. I’d like to suggest a few better uses for your time.)
I remember this! I saw it on Anderson Cooper tonight and spoke to a guest about how “moronic” and “offensive” her comments were, which of course I agree. Did you see the way she squirmed on the stand? And of course she was too busy throwing hissy fits and cell phones to know about blood diamonds.