When great leader's photo fails to flatter

Forget op-eds, exposes or investigative deep dives. The real critique - the one that bites - can be delivered via photo selection. Newspaper and magazine editors, guardians of public image, wield their real power not with prose but with pixels. And when they don't like a leader? Well, they can show it. Not with slander or scandal, or insinuations that will get 'information bureaus' calling them as if they've upset their in-laws, but with a picture of the Great Leader (GL) in an unflattering photo. The kind where GL looks not airbrushed as the most virile thing since toast buttered on both sides, but how he looks when the camera is usually pointed away. The candid picture tells its own 1,000-word story. And the best part? It's deniable. 'Oh, that's just the photo we had on file,' the chap who will lose his job can tell the editor with a straight face, who, in turn, can tell GL's peeps.

Meanwhile, what do the leaders and their minions like? Mugs bathed in golden light, eyes steeled with resolve, chin tilted toward destiny, the ultimate avuncular pose that plays the national anthem in the background. So, next time you see a president or PM looking like they've been caught 'midstream' on camera with optics overlooked, remember, someone, somewhere in a high-back swivel chair has spoken. Too many photos of GL were making the paper look silly.