The throne behind the power: from Putin’s toilet brush to Trump’s golden bowl
art and culture
We know how Vladimir Putin would like us to think of him: President Eternal, shirtless in khaki combat pants, galloping over the Urals in search of a bear to wrestle. We also know the areas of his life he would prefer to remain in a blur of unknowing – his wealth, his relationship status, his tally of children. We can be fairly sure, I think, that he takes little pleasure in the image dumped into the Russian imagination by Alexei Navalny, the Novichok-proof and now-jailed leader of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Vladimir Vladimirovich, trousers gathered at his ankles, piping a whorl of excrement into a toilet bowl, flanked by a symbol of cartoonish decadence – an $850 lavatory brush.
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Feb 04, 2021