Thais get a bang out of Obama
Play
Thailand's most updated English news website, newspaper english, breaking news : The Nation
Many Thais spotted the wacky photo of Barack Obama on the US Embassy’s Facebook page on Monday and some immediately assumed the site had been hacked and a shopped-up portrait posted. But, no, the president’s picture had been “officially” contrived for his comical speech at last weekend’s White House Correspondents Dinner.
For a second term in office, Obama told the chuckling reporters, you need to “try some new things”. His team was “willing to try anything. So we borrowed one of Michelle’s tricks.” Someone had layered the first lady’s hair bangs over her husband’s forehead.
Obama also noted that his wife is constantly on magazine covers, so now he’d followed suit. The screen behind him lit up with a mock cover of Senior Leisure magazine, showing him playing golf.
The social media were for the most part delighted to see more of his sense of humour. Thais commented how cute he looked on Facebook and some wondered if Prime Minister Yingluck could pull off the same sort of pranks.
With “Lincoln” director Stephen Spielberg in the audience, Obama also joked that the follow-up film would be “Obama”, again starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and showed a “trailer”. It had the president talking to the camera, tagged as Day-Lewis: “The cosmetics were challenging. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how long it takes to put these ears on in the morning.”
Americans had Ronald Reagan, the actor-turned-president. Why not a president-turned-actor?
It feels right
Warawut “Tum” Phoyim became the new champ on “The Star” on Sunday, with a 20-per-cent lead in the voting over fellow finalist Korakot “Oun” Tunkaew. But the bigger news, as far as the social media were concerned, was that a jinx had been broken.
In all eight previous seasons, the winner had always been the finalist standing on the viewers’ left. When Tum ended up on the right, a lot of people simply wrote him off. Then, when his victory was announced, the very first message posted was “Tum has survived the jinx!”
