Drunken Japanese Finance Minister Forced To Resign/Explain Chaos Theory

As you may have heard, Japan's Finance Minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, has quit after appearing drunk at this weekend's G7 Summit in Rome. Reports the New York Times:

The minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, raised eyebrows for slurred speech, muddled answers and appearing to fall asleep at a news conference in Rome on Saturday. A clip of Mr. Nakagawa in which he appeared to be groggy in front of journalists was posted on YouTube.

After intense criticism from politicians who said he had embarrassed Japan, Mr. Nakagawa stepped down on Tuesday, adding to the woes of a government that is facing a backlash for its handling of the economic crisis.

The footage actually is pretty crazy. I mean, there's just a bare minimum of decorum that we expect from our world leaders, and obviously the Greatest President of All Time, George W. Bush, who I would most want to get a beer with, lowered the bar on that one anyway, where now all you really need to do to look professional and stately is to literally NOT BE ASLEEP.

Sleep Drunk Man Minister after the jump.

Now he's the purveyor of, he's the generator of, he's the author of drunk stuff. Classic.

Posted by Gabe at 11:30 AM in Bad Idea Jeans, Bloopers, Politics
Tags: Alcohol | Economic Crisis | Japan | Whoops

6 Comments

The Slow and the Slumberous: Tokyo Drift

Posted by: Allah at 02/17/09 11:48 AM  | Reply
Score = 9

This should be on cutethingsfallingasleep.com. No, scratch that. Check out my new blog: drunkpoliciticiansfallingasleep.com.

PS: He's not drunk, he's just resting his eyes.

Posted by: Mcluskyist at 02/17/09 1:08 PM  | Reply
Score = 2

Seconded. We need less kittens falling asleep and more hungover Japanese Finance Ministers falling asleep. His yawn looks close enough to an animal's howl of pain, anyway.

Posted by: mike_d  in reply to  Mcluskyist's comment at 02/17/09 2:24 PM  | Reply
Score = 2

Whoops! Seppuku.

Posted by: Annie at 02/17/09 1:31 PM  | Reply
Score = 1

I was confused when you said this was a G7 summit but there is a giant G8 on the backdrop. Luckily, a quick wikipedia search clarified my confusion (G7 = G8 of Finance - Russia). So the question becomes, why are these G-organizers too cheap to buy a new backdrop?

Posted by: meANDmy_mONKEY at 02/17/09 1:55 PM  | Reply
Score = 1

Linking to an obviously slowed down video of GWB. HAHA ..looks like he's drunk..HAHAHA .....BORING. I guess you can't be clever all the time.

Posted by: LuLu at 02/18/09 7:09 AM  | Reply
Score = -1