Age: 42.
Appearance: potato with hair.
Occupation: likely new American ambassador to the UK.
A diplomat then? Don't be so naive. The ambassadorship to the Court of St James never goes to a career diplomat; it's given to a chum of the president for services rendered.
What services has Barzun rendered? A spot of high-level surveillance perhaps? How very topical, but sadly not. It's all about money. The ambassadorship to the UK is the president's plum appointment, coming as it does with a mansion and 12 acres in Regent's Park. It usually goes to the person who raised the most dosh in the election campaign.
How much did Barzun raise? As national finance chairman for Obama's 2012 campaign, he hauled in $700m. He was also a key Democratic figure in 2008, and is credited with building Obama's crucial network of citizen fundraisers. He got the ambassadorship to Sweden as a reward for his work in 2008, but this time has really hit the jackpot.
He's rich in his own right, presumably? Loaded. He's from a wealthy family that traces its New England lineage back to Puritan John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts; made a packet as chief strategy officer of technology reviews website CNET; and is married to Brooke Lee Brown, whose family own the company that makes Jack Daniel's.
Wasn't Anna Wintour tipped for the London job? A media fantasy – her financial pulling power was tiny compared with Barzun's.
Is it a good idea for diplomatic posts to be decided by patronage? Critics increasingly think not. About a third of ambassadorships go to the president's backers, including many of the most desirable European capitals, but several of Obama's first-term ambassadors came unstuck and had to be recalled because of poor management skills.
Who gets the other two-thirds? Career diplomats, who enjoy the delights of Albania, Burundi, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What about the rest of the alphabet? As you will notice we're getting close to the bottom of the column.
So will Wintour get a job? There's always fashionable Ouagadougou.
Not to be confused with: Polymath Jacques Barzun, his grandfather.
Do say: "Welcome to England, Your Excellency.
Don't say: "Lend us a tenner."
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