no government is pleased when the dirty laundry of its diplomatic practice is run up the capitol flagpole, as the Obama administration’s reaction to the Wikileaks revelations so amply demonstrates. But finding candidates who can project decency while carrying out the sometimes unpleasant duties of a political officer in a foreign land has always been easier said than done. Naked-lady painting Flemish diplomat Peter Paul Rubens could have told you that.

World Cup matches have an inevitable habit of re-enacting historical conflicts. This year’s final follows squarely in this tradition, pitting Spain against the Netherlands, combatants in one of the more protracted conflicts in history, the Eighty Years War. That fight, an on-and-off affair begun in the 1560s, went on for generations, its battles fought on five continents, making it the first truly world war, and thus an especially apt precursor to the World Cup.

the aughts

The decade got off to such a nice start, didn’t it? At the stroke of midnight, as the nines turned into zeroes, our millennial fears were allayed by magnums of champagne and an army of Silicon Alley wizards. Cities around the globe twinkled with the light of an infinity of camera flashes. It was all [...]

Peter Paul Rubens was a world-renowned painter of fleshy nudes — and a diplomat, spy and covert operative. His success as a diplomat was predicated on a combination of the high esteem in which he was held internationally and by his own great intelligence. Whatever one thinks about the timing of the Nobel, or of Obama generally, it’s hard to deny he shares these characteristics.