Not everyone is cut out for photo-ops

The Mexican mayor who sent a life-size cutout of himself to an event that he could not personally attend cannot really be faulted. After all, at most such functions, there is not much for the chief guest to do beyond “saying a few words” and then posing with a frozen rictus for endless photographs with the gathering. If the former can be addressed with a video recording — or holographic images, as has been done in India several times already — the latter can just as well be achieved with a cardboard likeness standing in for the VIP. A properly made doppelgänger fashioned from a particularly flattering photograph could serve the purpose of special snapshots for the adoring masses better than the real McCoy.

Such a solution is especially useful if the personage does not always live up to his or her larger-than-life image face to face. A few added or subtracted inches in the right places can be effected only in cutouts, not in the actual person. Indeed, the people posing with the Mexican mayor’s cutout do not appear to be annoyed. Maybe they found it less taxing to be close to a silent leader who did not have any problems with wherever they made him stand and for unlimited lengths of time. As Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has been denied permission to attend a mayors’ meet in Denmark, he can consider sending a cutout.