Click the pic to play the video.
OK, so Vladimir Putin has apparently created a stir at home by kissing the belly of a 5-year-old boy. Watch the video and tell me if it makes any sense for this to be in the news at all. Would you let your kid sleep over at his home after this? :-)
After a week of frenzied speculation across Russia, President Vladimir Putin has finally explained that he had kissed a young boy on the stomach in the Kremlin because he wanted to “stroke him like a kitten”.
But his explanation during a live webcast held by the BBC and a popular Russian browser left many viewers even more bemused.
The normally dour former KGB officer insisted that it was a spontaneous decision to approach the five-year-old, who was in a group of tourists, to lift his shirt and kiss his stomach.
“People came up and I began talking to them, among them this little boy. He seemed to me very independent, sure of himself and at the same time defenceless, so to speak, an innocent boy and a very nice little boy,” Mr Putin said.
The country was so stunned that the issue shot almost to the top of a list of more than 162,000 questions sent into www.yandex.ru, which co-hosted the webcast yesterday.
The first time always seems bizarre, but maybe this will be all the rage among politicians very soon. The day will come when not kissing kids on the belly will be considered political suicide. Political advance teams will recruit and line up hundreds of kids at every campaign stop, just to have their bellies kissed. And Michael Jackson will take a sudden interest in politics.
But today it all seems quite strange.
Big deal… My girlfriend lived in Ukraine and Russia and said it is normal practice to kiss infants bellies. Granted not necessarily 5 year olds, but that looked pretty innocent. Or staged by an American PR firm…
I’ll admit it’s creepy but the guys a father of two and it looked to me to be a bit of harmless, fatherly playfulness. That said, I wouldn’t let him do that to my kid.
Next thing, Michael Jackson will move to Russia…
I saw that video Friday on VH1’s Best Week Ever and found it disturbing then. They had the Kitten quote as well but I thought that was a joke.
Maybe it is a cultural thing kind of like the men holding hands in Saudi. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0426/dailyUpdate.html
Not that it matters. Both sort of creep me out.
Michael Jackson not impressed.
The story does not show the pederasty of Putin as much as the pedophiliaphobia of Americans. Americans are obsessed with the subject, much more than the actual reality warrants. It’s similar to the 19th century obsesssion with the sexual madness of Negros, the Communist inflitration madness of Hearst’s rags or the 1980’s wave of witch hysteria (satanism, same thing) in the American south. In this case I blame the New Media, rationalized and streamlined for profit generation, which sells obsessive fear, generates and concentrates mad obsession with invisible evil rather than the calmer rational analysis of the golden era of journalism circa 1960-1980. William Randolph Hearst’s yellow journalism is reborn, at a time we have so many more real, deadly problems to address.
Sadly, children are growing up convinced that strangers are out toi grope them. Sadder still is the fact that most actual pedophilia is the domain of immediate family. We’re focused on nonsense. In Russia, people still touch children with affection; it’s a measure of how far up the madness curve that we cover it as a scandal. Even democratic nations can go nutso. I imagine it’s even easier when the least of the loonies can grab a soapbox and terrify parents, especially when the brainless twits who are journalists today see dollar signs in pumping up the volume.
look at it this way. IF this is news then there must not be a lot going on right now over in the old USSR.
Now how many people will correc t me that its no longer the USSR?
correct, #6
Catbeller, did you even read the story? Any of it? Even the first sentence…
“After a week of frenzied speculation across Russia…”
…or watch the video, which is in Russian
Also from ABC:
“Footage of the June 28 incident was broadcast on all Russian television stations. It quickly became fodder for Internet chat rooms and topped the Moscow tabloids the day after.”
How then did you conclude that Americans are obsessed with the story, while for the Russians it was no big deal??? Or, as you put it, “We’re focused on nonsense. In Russia, people still touch children with affection….”
What has become of us, if we find this creepy, strange etc? Are we so preoccupied, obsessed, maybe infatuated by child abuse that everything becomes sexual? Give the children a break! Doesn’t intention matter at all?
This was a sweat kiss, coming from the heart. I’m convinced that it had no sexual motivation at all. I have a 2-year old and would have had no problem at all with that gesture.
Not everyone is a pedophile. Can we love children for what they are, cute, fun huggable innocent sweethearts?
CREEPY
mmm… bellybutton lint… crazy russians
To me, it’s exactly what it is, a non-story.
Move along, there is literally nothing to see here. It’s a fricken “politician kisses baby” type deal. Jesus Christ, are we THIS fricken starved for controversy?
#7 – “The story does not show the pederasty of Putin as much as the pedophiliaphobia of Americans. Americans are obsessed with the subject, much more than the actual reality warrants.”
YES!
It seems that we Americans are so obsessed with protecting children that we’d actually have to invent ways to endanger them in order to have something to protect them from.
Weird piece of Journalism. I’m Russian, and read Russian news fairly often, but didn’t know about this untill now. Anyways, it’s no big deal.
Also, when did moderation stop? It used to take half an hour for posts t be processed, but now it’s like 2 seconds. BTW, #11 is right.
Just a dude, showing he likes children, not that he likes having sex with them. Damn dirty American minds.
#11, Perhaps ‘ sweat kisses ‘ are a tradition in your family and that’s why you believe they are acceptable and the norm.
I didn’t give ‘ sweat kisses ‘ to another person, my personal preferece was and continues to those of the female persuasion, until I had reached puberty.
Presently, I only indulge in ‘ sweat kisses ‘ with my wife.
Oh, well, different strokes for different folks.
Obvously.
Allen McDonald, El Galloviejo®
of course, the clip does not show what happened later – Putin messily devouring the hapless child. the belly kiss was just tenderizing.
7. / 11. You’re right.
Can anyone remember the days when home doors could be left unlocked and strangers could be counted on as surrogate parents. Men even routinely referred to male children they did not know as “son.”
Now kids are purposely raised to avoid all encounters with strangers. I wonder what kind of a society that ultimately produces? Other than paranoid, I mean.
RBG
I read the background story on this in the Times of London last week. It’s part of Putins new PR push for the non-Russian news people. He’s very popular with the Russian people but Europeans aren’t quite so hot for him, since the gas scare last winter and a few other little almost dictator things he’s done in the last year. So, he has been doing things to show he’s not a stuff shirt, or Mr. Hardass……he originally said he had no clue why he did that, and I’m betting a whole bunch of media advisors are looking for work in Moscow right now……lol
My Dad said it reminded him of when Nixon tried to act like *one of us* back before he was elected in 1968.
I wonder if Putin is having a Michael Jackson thing going on.
Not pedophilia but letting his isolation and “yes men” turn him weird without him realizing it.