Japan’s PM yukio hatoyama… melting fast in the summer heat?

If you were the prime minister of a small nation with the world’s second largest GDP,  which, my friends, would be worse?

• A 67% disapproval rating, resulting in you being written off as a ‘lame duck premier’ by the Financial Times? 
• Having a character so weak your predecessor, Yasuhiro Nakasone, describes it as ‘sweet like soft ice cream that melts fast in the summer heat’? (I like ice cream, but I don’t think that’s a compliment. Especially for a guy who comes from a powerful Japanese dynasty not unlike the Kennedys).
  
• Being called ‘despicable and craven’ by the LA Times after displaying virtually no backbone when it comes to upholding campaign promises. In this case, Hatoyama promised to ask the US military to remove their base from Okinawa… only to later bow to Okinawan locals and ask them to pretty much just suck it up. Doesn’t he know they live longer than anyone else in the world? These folks have been sucking it up for years.
  

• Being married to an ex-actress?
• Ok, a crazy ex-actress.  When Miyuki Hatoyama’s not enjoying kimchi in Korea, she often ‘eats the sun for energy’.  She also believes she met Tom Cruise in an a former life.  Tom Cruise. When he was Japanese. And she went to Venus in a UFO. (This woman takes cuckoo to a whole new level. Not even a depraved manga artist could write this stuff).
• Inadvertently supporting the thriving pachinko parlour industry through a misguided baby bonus scheme.  Analysts from Daiwa believe families receiving Hatoyama’s Y13,000 (£96) monthly baby bonus in cash — instead of vouchers — to help with childcare costs are more likely to spend it on gambling, visiting theme parks or buying video games. 
• Having possibly the worst taste in fashion, ever. Seriously, EVER.

I say it’s all bad, and Japan deserves better. Junichiro Koizumi’s time in office was flawed, but at least the dude had style* (and celebrity friends).

Hatoyama masks from h yamamoto, kimchi pic from Korea.net, fashion shots from Huffington Post, Koizumi shots from AP & Google.

*I blame my mother and our 2009 pilgrimage to Graceland for my weakness toward fellow Elvis fans. Koizumi-san shares his birthday with the King, and in 2001 released a charity CD of hand-picked Elvis hits. He was but a poor prime minister with great taste in rock’n’roll.

David cameron wants to be like common people

I went to Eton paid a lot for knowledge…

Today I received my postal voting papers. Not long after, a dear friend sent me this Pulp-inspired ditty, officially ruining this classic song for me forever.

Sack off health care, cut some jobs
Support the rich guys & fuck the yobs.

Then in another attempt to gain some street cred, Cameron announced The Wire is excellent and Dominic ‘McNulty’ West used to fancy his wife. Fortunately, West deftly blamed it on his mysterious friend, ‘Nick’. This comes directly from the Telegraph’s Election Coverage, not some two-bit glossie.

Now if I can just get my head around hung parliaments, I’ll be ready to cast my vote.

I agree with nick, but…

I don’t agree with copyright infringement.

The latest article/free downloadable poster from the Guardian - which asks if Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is the British Obama - is almost enough to put me off reading the paper forever.

Yesterday began with London Mayor/Tory toff/Telegraph columnist Boris Johnson extolling his party leader, David Cameron, who had ‘aced every question’ during last week’s leaders’ debate, and carried on with an anecdote of how he once bet £1,000 that his party would win the next election. Mayor Boris even suggested someone had spiked the water supply, to explain so much new support for Clegg.

Now, my feelings toward Cameron/the Tories is largely based on the fact that Cameron chose Take That’s Gary Barlow to back his campaign/earn some stripes with the kids. (Obama had the Boss, even George W. Bush managed to get Britney Spears onside… but Gary Barlow? What could Cameron know about young people if he’s calling Take That for help?).

I didn’t agree with Boris, but his article was far more entertaining than Oliver Burkeman’s Guardian piece, which asks:

Is Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg an Obama-style hero for our times, a Churchillian leader or a popular rebel in the mould of Che Guevara? Perhaps he’s just another great British underdog

Poor Che, victim of so many crimes against popular culture, he doesn’t deserve the commercial fate that has been thrust upon him by souvenir shops, college kids and Guardian’s political team.

As for Clegg in the iconic* Hope picture, I sincerely hope the Guardian commissioned Shephard Fairey to re-imagine his earlier work, or better yet, consulted the Associated Press. They would’ve had to, right? Considering that Fairey spent most of last year in court fighting the AP over copyright infringement for his Hope picture of Obama, the Guardian must’ve checked their sources.

In the Fairey vs Associated Press case, AP believed the popular street artist used Mannie Garcia’s photo of Obama (above right) as the basis of the Hope picture, effectively replicating the image in a ‘paint by numbers’ without obtaining proper copyright permission. Fairey actually filed a pre-emptive lawsuit citing ‘fair use’ of the photo, which he transformed into a:

…stunning, abstracted and idealized visual image that creates powerful new meaning and conveys a radically different message.

(Bless him, he might actually be stretching the terms ‘radical’ in this sense).

Fairey also claimed he used the Obama picture above, with George Clooney, as his reference. This was a pertinent point in the case, as it meant Fairey’s close-up Hope image involved more original input (that’s without even mentioning the fact that he added a badge to Obama’s lapel!).

The lawsuit took an odd turn in October when Fairey admitted that he had in fact lied about using the Clooney picture as a reference, and had even gone as far as creating new documents in his defence. The case continues, obviously without any limits on further ‘fair use’ of the AP/Garcia photo if national papers such as the Guardian are free to re-imagine it once again.

This latest (mis)use, in Burkeman’s article on the ‘Clegginess of Clegg’, is part of a selection of images - Clegg as Obama, Che, Churchill. Fortunately, Burkeman manages to bring the Cleggomania back to reality, before it gets too out of hand:

Nick Clegg looks kind of normal, he wears normal-looking clothes, he has some good ideas, along with a few that are a bit rubbish; he might do OK, but if we’re honest, probably not brilliantly, and he has provoked a low-key outburst of restrained hysteria.

So maybe it was all a bit tongue-in-cheek after all. Still, enough with recycling these old images of politicos - I think we’re ready for a new icon.

Read the Guardian article or Mayor Boris in the Telegraph.

<Nick Clegg from the Guardian and Hope/original AP pictures from PD online, who’ve been following the lawsuit for months and have plenty of juicy details>.

*I know, mum, ‘icon’ should be reserved for religious reasons. It’s late, ok?