As a guide for how to deal with the insults, about-turns and wreck­ing ball style that pass for Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy with­out resort­ing to pro­fan­i­ty, I sug­gest chan­nel­ing Shakespeare’s “Ham­let”, with a small tweak: “Appro­pri­ate or inap­pro­pri­ate, that is the question.”

There has been much ado about whether or not French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Min­is­ter Sir Keir Starmer act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly by engag­ing in what many saw as an excess of flat­tery, at the expense of mano-a-mano (hand­shakes notwith­stand­ing) in their recent pil­grim­ages to the White House.
But diplo­ma­cy is the art of telling some­one to go to hell in a way that makes them look for­ward to the trip.
Being a five star nar­cis­sist, Trump is unable to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between  praise, which is  a way to express favourable judge­ment or sin­cere appre­ci­a­tion, and insin­cere flat­tery as a tool to fool a fool.
Starmer and Macron’s ploy was an appro­pri­ate re-write of  Bru­tus’ solil­o­quy in Shakespeare’s “Julius Cae­sar”: “I come to manip­u­late Trump, not praise him.”
Inap­pro­pri­ate was on full dis­play when Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky showed up at the White House.
Trump’s “he’s all dressed up today” jibe was the scene-setter.
Zelen­sky has been dress­ing the same way for three years, as a ges­ture of sol­i­dar­i­ty with his sol­diers on the front lines against Russia.
 Inap­pro­pri­ate­ly from a news­wor­thy point of view,  a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the MAGA-mouth­piece “Real America’s Voice” sneered from the front row of the press pool: “Why don’t you wear a suit? You’re in the high­est lev­el of this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit?”
That smacked of a plant­ed ques­tion, a tac­tic polit­i­cal aides and flaks fre­quent­ly employ with jour­nal­ists. Whether or not to go along with one is a judge­ment call, based on a pro­fes­sion­al assess­ment of the agen­da behind the  ques­tion, and whether and how the answer may advance the story.
The les­son (if any was need­ed) from  the ques­tion, the tone in which was posed and by whom, is that the Trump White House press office has no inten­tion of allow­ing real jour­nal­ists to ask ques­tions the boss might per­ceive as inappropriate.

                 ON THE OTHER HAND

Shield­ing Vice-pres­i­dent J.D. Vance from ques­tions that require real
knowl­edge is prob­a­bly appro­pri­ate, however.
His answer to Zelensky’s barbed ques­tion of whether he’d ever been to Ukraine was: “I’ve actu­al­ly watched and seen the stories.”
As one who cov­ered a fair num­ber of wars, I like to think we mem­bers of what William Howard Rus­sell, who is wide­ly held to be the first mod­ern war cor­re­spon­dent, called “a luck­less tribe”, do the best we can to bring the real­i­ty and impli­ca­tions of war into the pub­lic eye.
But if Vice-Pres­i­dent Vance, a fer­vent mem­ber of the “fake news” shout­ing tribe, thinks watch­ing and read­ing the news makes him expert enough to be part of form­ing and pro­pelling U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy on Ukraine, he has more faith in the scope of war report­ing than my tribe does.
Cer­tain­ly we can have an influ­ence. In August 1982, after an 11 hour Israeli bom­bard­ment of  West Beirut, an out­raged Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan called Israeli PM Men­achem Begin and ordered him to stop.
It is wide­ly held that report­ing on the day (of which I am proud to have
con­tributed) prompt­ed Reagan’s shift in sup­port for Israel’s action.
As Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an and polit­i­cal biog­ra­ph­er Robert Caro wrote :“I don’t believe that pow­er always cor­rupts, Pow­er reveals.”
What pow­er revealed this past week was a tur­bid, mal­odor­ous oleo of pet­ty vin­dic­tive­ness, crass insen­si­tiv­i­ty, ill-man­nered arro­gance, his­tor­i­cal igno­rance and seething insecurity,
None of that is appro­pri­ate for a leader of any demo­c­ra­t­ic nation, least of all one in thrall to the myth that all should bow before him, to put on open display.

                   FAIR AND FOUL

Tak­ing Amer­i­can wine and spir­its off shelves in Ontario liquor out­lets is an appro­pri­ate response to Trump’s 25 per­cent tariffs.
I think leav­ing them on dis­play to gath­er dust would be a protest more appro­pri­ate to Canadian’s vaunt­ed polite­ness, if per­haps  too pas­sive-aggres­sive for some.
Either way, one behav­iour wide­ly con­sid­ered inap­pro­pri­ate turns out to actu­al­ly be beneficial.
Accord­ing to a researcher at Keele Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land, swear­ing “is a drug-free, calo­rie-neu­tral, cost-free means of self-help.”
What bet­ter news could there be for those of us with­out the wit or where­with­al to match such appro­pri­ate Shake­speare­an insults as: “Away, you starvel­ling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s‑tongue, bull’s‑pizzle, you stock-fish!
(For a Prince Edward Island school teacher’s ver­sion of what  what Cana­di­ans think, give your­self a treat and  click this link: https://www.quintenews.com/2025/02/26/351509/)

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