Obama Uses Famous Painting for Diplomacy

Obama cheeses in front of Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch

President Obama must still be getting flak from angry art historians over that little comment he made a few months back. The prez said, “"I promise you folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.” 

Why you gotta rub salt in the wound, Barack? The joke hit too close to home for up-to-our-necks in debt graduates and offended professors so much that he had to later apologize for insinuating academia isn’t useful.

Realizing the great power of art history professors, POTUS backtracks.

So today in Amsterdam, our Commander-in-Chief threw art lovers another bone by visiting the Rijksmuseum and holding a press conference in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. He even stated, “"I’m proud to be here with some of the Dutch masters I studied in school.” One of us! One of us!

Let’s wildly speculate on the reasons Obama would hold a meeting about foreign policy in an art museum:

1. As previously stated, he is bombarded with longwinded letters from out of work art history students who are using his faux-pas to practice their studied craft: the act of writing paragraph upon paragraph of overly complex and argumentative ideas using vocabulary so academic and confusing even the President of the United States has to use a thesaurus to understand it.

   “What the heck is the ‘aestheticization of simultaneously present yet covert realities’? That doesn’t mean anything!”

2. Art historians are connected to the Illuminati, and have threatened impeachment if Obama doesn’t make art history cool again.  This information is directly sourced from Dan Brown.

   Look at Tom Hank’s hair. It’s full of secrets.

3. The director of the Rijksmuseum has a cousin in the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs who lost a bet whilst playing quarters at the family reunion and was forced to get him some free publicity.

4. Vladimir Putin’s military build-up and the annexation of Crimea have the Dutch feeling a bit threatened, and they want to remind the world that, though small, the Netherlands is full of vigilant officers active even at night.  Just in case power-hungry Putin gets any ideas about invading them, too.

   Don’t let this picture fool you. He is very shifty.
5. The painted scene of militia men preparing to mobilize is a hint to what actions the U.S. is about to take in Russia, the Ukraine and Syria for hanging on to those chemical weapons. Though the frilly collars and funny hats in this Dutch Golden Age scene may not scream global authority to those out of the loop, anyone who browses Sartle will know that indeed those muskets are the epitome of manliness.  Who says art history can’t be macho? 

We Sartlers think press conferences in front of famous paintings should be the new norm for all diplomatic excursions.  From our mouths to those big White House ears…

By Angelica Jardini