Putin’s Final Dog and Pony Show
Four hours and forty minutes. Two hours and six minutes of which were broadcast live on Russian TV. One thousand three hundred and sixty-four journalists. Over 100 questions from fifty-two reporters. Those are some heady stats. When the vozhd’ speaks, the media listens.
Putin appeared loose in his final showcase. Reuters described his performance as “mixed flirtatious banter with metaphors about snot and showed a gift for sarcastic brush-offs worthy of a stand-up comedian.” The snot references were to questions about his alleged hidden wealth and the hard man hours he put in as Prez. To the former he said that reports about his wealth were “rubbish . . . excavated from someone’s nose and then spread on those bits of paper”. To the latter, he said “Heads of state have no right to whine, or drool for any reason… If they are going to slobber and blow snot and say ..read more
