Parker: Trump is not Putin's poodle; breed is better than that
It didn’t take long after the Helsinki summit for European and American media publications to declare Donald Trump Vladimir Putin’s pet dog.
Britain’s Daily Mirror used “Putin’s poodle” in its next-day coverage. Other European and American outlets referred to the president as “weak” or “submissive.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan said on Twitter that Trump’s tail-wagging submission to Putin was “nothing short of treasonous.” Even Foreign Policy magazine hacked the benighted poodle in its headline: “Trump Is Coming Off as Putin’s Poodle, But That Actually Undermines Russia’s Main Goal.”
Editorial cartoonists ran with the image. Atlanta-based Trevor Irvin depicted Putin holding a leash attached to a pink-poufed Trump poodle and tossing a tennis ball in the air. The caption: “Let’s play fetch my little Troodle.” Two days before the summit, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez had pre-emptively called the president “Putin’s poodle” after a Trump tweet about the indictment of 12 Russians as part of the Mueller investigation.
In journalism, we call that a trend.
But this isn’t the first time a world leader has been characterized as a poodle, again for appearing to do another’s bidding. During the Iraq War, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair was often called President George W. Bush’s poodle. A sampling of headlines: “Was Blair Bush’s poodle?” (The Financial Times); “I’m not Bush’s poodle, insists Blair” (Daily Mail); “Ten Years Later, Still Bush’s Poodle” (The National Interest); “Bush: Blair Was No Poodle” (CBS News).
You get the idea.
Not surprisingly, poodles are outraged. Surely, any fair person would concede that they deserve a voice in the matter, which I have volunteered to provide. I am a poodle person. I am not, however, a poufy-poodle person, as my unkempt Ollie would attest were he able. Poodles, which originated in Germany, not France, as often believed, were bred as duck-hunting retrievers. It was the French, however, who began the practice of turning these enthusiastic swimmers into canine topiaries.
The idea behind these poodle aspersions, apparently, is that when a world leader appears to be weak or subservient, then he or she is considered to be poodle-like. This is absurd on its face. First of all, poodles are inexplicably brave, especially those of the toy breed, which, despite their aptitude in other matters, are oblivious to scale.
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