I have never been great at saying “Cheese!” for the camera, and have a sneaking respect for public figures who always look stony-faced. The cold war Soviet minister Andrei Gromyko, known as “grim Grom”, was most famous for this.
But his crown has surely been taken by Kanye West, who posed next to Donald Trump after their meeting this week at Trump Tower. He managed a few smiles. But by and large he had, as they say in Yorkshire, a face like a smacked arse.
As Donald grinned insistently, Kanye looked like someone had taken his pet goldfish out of its bowl, laid it on the driveway and done some flamenco-style stomping on it. When asked what they discussed, Trump said: “Life.” West later said he raised issues including bullying and violence.
Of course, it is possible that the Donald had promised to tackle these – but only if Kanye sang at his inauguration. So Kanye had to find a way of changing the subject: “Will you sing at my inauguration, Kanye?” – “Life, Donald. Life. Isn’t life a heckuva thing? Life.” – “No, but will you? Will you endure a lifetime’s social media shame and sing at my inauguration?” – “Oh, Mr President-Elect. Life is such a business. Life is something to think about. Look at the way the sun is streaming through the windows.”
Playground tactics
No one can remember a time when pundits were not piously declaring that the public had had enough of “yah-boo politics”. But the public loves yah-boo politics. Trump/Brexit is the epitome of yah-boo politics. And the prime minister’s tetchy chief of staff, Fiona Hill, has kept this political tradition alive, having famously texted the petulant taunt “So there!” to the former minister Nicky Morgan after a debate about Theresa May’s leather trousers.
Whichever of them leaked this spat to the press evidently considers herself to have had the last word and to be therefore the winner. It is interesting to see that these juvenile expressions still have currency: in 1975, Edward Heath responded to requests for help from the new Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher, by snapping “Shan’t!” and “Won’t!”
What Morgan should have texted back to Hill was of course: “You smell – no returns.” But maybe this kind of badinage is now headed for the dustbin of cultural history. Discussions with my 12-year-old reveal that nowadays playground quarrels take the form of cutting remarks on each other’s Instagram feeds. Hill should have just commented on Morgan’s picture of a sunset: “OMG Juno filter is rubbish.”
Islands in the steam
However bad things have got in 2016, there is still time to dip to a new low. And that may come this week, when Vladimir Putin takes his clothes off for the cameras – yet again (he isn’t averse to revealing his pecs, sometimes astride a horse). This week, he meets the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in the premier’s hometown of Nagato.
They are expected to get their kit off – most of it – and climb into a hot spring bath or onsen, thought to encourage “naked communion”. This, it is hoped, will get Putin to loosen up and agree to give the Kuril Islands, in the Pacific, back to Japan – Soviet troops having claimed them at the end of the second world war.
Whenever I have got into a hot tub with strangers, it just feels uncomfortable. I wouldn’t feel like returning any islands. Cameras may be there to record the event – but perhaps Putin will take pity on us and wear a discreet spa-style towelling dressing gown, and remove it only when the photographers have left.
