“"What I did not anticipate, honestly, was the degree, the volume, the relentless anti-Americanism that we’re seeing right now," McFaul told me in February, a note of real hurt ringing in his normally chipper, measured voice. "That is odd for us. Because we have spent three years trying to build a different relationship with this country." He added, almost stuttering, "I mean, I’m genuinely confused by it."

A month later, he lost it.

The explosion came when McFaul arrived at the office of For Human Rights, an NGO in Moscow’s historic center. He was going to see his old friend, veteran human rights activist Lev Ponomarev, whom he’d known since he was an international studies graduate student running around perestroika-era Moscow. It may have been late March, but it was cold and the stuff that fell from the sky was neither snow nor rain: a long cry from McFaul’s California home. As ambassador, though, he didn’t have to bother with a jacket: he had his black Cadillac.

Had he known that the redhead from NTV would again be waiting for him with a camera crew, however, he may have dressed a little warmer.

What was McFaul going to discuss with Ponomarev?, the redhead asked as the camera bounced to follow the moving ambassador.

"Your ambassador moves about without this, without you getting in the way of his work," McFaul said in slightly crooked Russian. He was clearly angry but maintained a wide, all-American smile. "And you guys are always with me. In my house! Are you not ashamed of this? You’re insulting your own country when you do this, don’t you understand?"

"We understand," the redhead said, before going on to inquire which opposition politicians McFaul supported. McFaul, who had already turned to walk into the building, wheeled around, the huge smile now touched with a cartoonish disbelief.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/30/the-undiplomat/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4029327&forum_id=2#36452597)