Javier Marias has an article in the New Republic, pointing out that no matter how terrible your predicament, one can’t help but compare it to something seen on television or in popular film. The same goes for our perceptions of our political leaders:

And isn’t the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, with his vociferous curses against the United States, the small, fat, childish king who makes appearances in the Tintin and Capitan Trueno adventures? (It’s easy to imagine Chavez dressed in a pointed crown and christening robe and baring his barrel chest.)

And isn’t Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin the spitting image of the cold-blooded assassin who shoots when the cymbals sound in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock film, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”?