Speaking at an American Studies conference about “Politics and Religion in USA” at an Islamabad university, Deputy Chief of Mission for the United States Embassy Patricia A. Butenis felt compelled to explain that, despite all appearances, the U.S. really is still a secular state and proud of it. As evidence, Butenis offered the wording of the Constitution and the absense of an official state church or religious tests for public servants. Religion and politics were complicated issues in America, said Butenis, but still, religion is a personal matter here and the government didn’t get involved. Then she changed the subject to the U.S. aid marked for Pakistani educational reform. What’s more striking about the story than Butenis’s squirming though, is its similarity to an incident described last month in Time, when Vladimir Putin responded to President Bush’s challenges on press freedom in Russia by asking, “If the press was so free in the U.S., then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs?” Explained a senior administration official, “‘Putin thought we’d fired Dan Rather. It was like something out of 1984.'” Sure, there was faulty information and misunderstanding behind Putin’s belief that the U.S. government was controlling the news as he did himself, but the need to rebut such a charge of outright repression couldn’t help but highlight the subtler government manipulations of the press that do go on, and in reference to which, Putin’s question is apt indeed: If the press is so free here, then why do these reporters keep losing their jobs? Same goes for the misunderstanding Butenis set out to correct: Even if the U.S. is not officially a Christian nation as Pakistan is an Islamic state, what truth complicates this misconception — apparently held by a number of Pakistanis well-aquainted with the looks and sounds of theocratic ducks — that we aren’t that different from them, after all?