The International Olympic Committee held a news conference Thursday in Beijing for its president, Thomas Bach. He also could have doubled as Chinese Communist Party spokesman.
Bach is a smart guy. A 68-year old German lawyer who speaks four languages and has run the vast, complicated IOC for nearly a decade.
He is certainly too smart of a guy to not know what he was doing when he tried to give reasonable answers to human rights controversies but used the precise kind of language favored by China, who is hosting these Winter Games.