Short and Stupid: My other blog

Hey y'all -- realize I've been a ball-dropping bitch on the subject of this blog the last coupla days. I was gonna write one called "The Agony of the Feet" today, about the vicissitudes of running, but I just don't have it in me today.

Instead, I'm going to link you to my other blog: Politicians Giving the Thumbs Up.

A while ago, I realized that politicians, as a class of people, give the thumbs up way more often than any other class of people on earth. I almost never give anyone thumbs up; it's just not a gesture in my physical vocabulary. It's not in many people's, really. But politicians do it all the time. In fact, since starting the thumbs-up blog, I've discovered that that was more true than I had ever before understood.

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The Governator with his thumb.

There do seem to be certain politicians for whom the move isn't natural -- notably, I haven't been able to find anybody from Idaho or Nevada -- but the thumbs up appears to cross most cultural bounds. It's endemic among American and British politicians for sure (the two thumbsie-upsiest politicians in the world appear to be UK Prime Minister David Cameron and US Vice President Joe Biden), and it appears to be common throughout the English-speaking world: there are plenty of Canadian and Australian politicians who have been photographed giving the gesture as well.

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Mark Rutte, PM of the Netherlands, giving the international sign for "I am positive, trustworthy, and happy. You should vote for me."

But it transcends national boundaries. Now and again I've decided I need to find a politician from a non-US/Commonwealth country giving the thumbs up, and it has rarely been a challenge. The Presidents of Argentina and Brazil flash it often. The PM of the Netherlands is an enthusiast of the gesture. So is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Edrogan.

So far, the world's two largest countries have evaded my attempts. It may be that India and China lack a culture of the thumbs-up -- I'm sure that's true in many places. But it may also be that I haven't looked hard enough yet.