The infamous Tony Blair wank-gesture photo

[NinetySix]

Has anyone seen the image of Tony Blair from the 70s? Or has everyone but me already seen it and stopped talking about it?



God, this is a scream. This has got to be the funniest goddamn thing I've seen in a long time. Blair is hating it already anyway, then this humiliating photo comes out? I swear, it's gotta be poetic justice. I draw great satisfaction over that guy having to squirm over this one after playing his political role these last number of years.

All that aside, it's funny how an image like that can come out under different circumstances and be viewed dramatically differently. Imagine had Bush and Blair been right all along, we were living in a peaceful, secure world, thanks to their decisive action, and this photo had come out then -- WE would have been the ones grumbling, because everyone would have been laughing with him, as though it were a symbol to wave in our faces after being spectacularly wrong.... It's so much funnier this way!

This picture is now my desktop photo (Sorry Al and Oscar).

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Are you sure...

That isn't a band photo of Electric Light Orchestra?

[TomInTib]

2. Now THAT is danged funny!! eom

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

7. I try, bubbaman.

I try. ;-)

[NinetySix]

3. Looks like it, doesn't it!

But here it is, in a London publication:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23387466-details/Young+Blair's+obscene+gesture/article.do

[provis99]

4. ahh, the 70s, when white guys had afros and

a man was measured by the width of his bellbottoms

[T_i_B]

5. That and David Cameron's Bullingdon Club photo...

...are all over UK political blogs. It's the latest party political pissing match over here.

[bananarepublican]

6. He could explain his Iraq policy in the exact same way today. n/t

[LeftishBrit]

8. Yes, the Brits have been talking about this for a while

The general conclusion is that we all knew anyway that Tony is a wanker, without his needing to draw a diagram!

There's a rival photo making the rounds, of Tory leader Cameron when he was a member of the Bullingdon Club (an exclusive club for a rich and silly minority of Oxford University students, who go around getting drunk and making nuisances of themselves to other students and to the general public).

I could have guessed that they were both prats when young, and haven't improved with age.