Barracking in Beirut

The Trumpster administration's ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria has done his monarch credit with an outstanding display of sledgehammer imperial diplomacy. After a meeting with the Lebanese president, the indignitary lectured a roomful of noisy journalists with schoolmistressy sternness, ordering them not to become "animalisic" and proclaiming that the whole miserable story of regional obstructionism towards the Pax Netanyahoo can be attributed to lack of proper deportment in the Press. While organisations representing journalists, photojournalists, editors and the Party of God breathed the flame of the righteously indignant, the Lebanese government quietly dropped coals with an expression of regret at "remarks made inadvertently," implying that the poor half-wit just couldn't help himself.