Ho ho (Derision in High Places II)

BBC:

[The outgoing US ambassador to Venezuela] poked fun at President Chavez's anti-American rhetoric, saying Americans were likely to do "very conspiratorial things" during the Independence Day holiday, such as attending baseball games.

Mr Maduro told reporters that "William Brownfield came to Venezuela with one mission: to destabilize the government of President Chavez, to help topple him. And his mission has failed."

Maduro states an obvious truth. But look closely at the preceding factory-built sentence, if you can bear the pain: "poked fun" (a capital offence already, that locution); "anti-American" (ditto); "rhetoric" (in BBC English, this means 'disgraceful eloquence in the articulation of unwelcome truths'); and finally, the joke: "very conspiratorial things". (Geddit?!?!)

How wry. I think it's fair to say that Mr. Brownfield was deriding the idea that the US government would ever do what it always does and always has done .