Most everyone knows that Peter Paul Rubens was a great artist, the Old Master who most famously enjoyed painting ladies of ample proportion. (The euphemism "Rubensesque" dates to a 1913 story in the Canadian women's magazine Maclean's — the editors considered his taste "eccentric.") It is often and unfortunately forgotten that Rubens lived a double life as a spy and diplomat, and this is the subject of my forthcoming book, Master of Shadows. In what I consider a rather satisfying bit of parallelism, an essay adapted from that book appears today in the Wall Street Journal on the same day that Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is the paper’s lead story. Rubens was a pragmatic, moderate man whose 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 with Rubens. (more...)

You heard me. Aside from being an object of reverence for millions and having a rather shayna punim, these two have something very specific in common, tied to recent events. Yes, Megan Fox may give boys the kind of heart palpitations requiring proper health care, and yes President Barack Obama may be accused of feeding on the taxpayer like a bloodsucking socialist vampire, but actually it's far more mundane than that: They're both pretty expert at packaging — and using — their soundbites. (more...)