President Obama speaks softly and carries a big baseball bat

Next time you have a phone conversation with a work colleague or a customer service operative having just stepped out of the shower, or in a state of afterpants , spare a thought for Barack Obama. When you're followed nearly everywhere you go by official White House photographer Pete Souza , merely picking up some random object during a call might spark a diplomatic incident. Hence the outrage in Turkey over this photograph, released by the White House last week, which shows Obama in the Oval Office, talking to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while fiddling a souvenir bat signed by Hank Aaron . "The photo reveals from whom our prime minister receives orders to rule the country," said one Turkish opposition politician, Metin Lufti Baydar, cannily spotting a PR opportunity, though my favourite take on the matter comes from a columnist for Russia's government-sponsored world service media: "Had he been dressed in a tracksuit and tennis shoes, perhaps we could have been convinced of Obama's sporting virtues and love of sports, yet the photograph shows Obama in his official uniform, complete with jacket and tie, as he very demonstrably holds a baseball bat with a white-knuckle grip … the White House knows exactly what it is doing." This seems, shall we say, relatively unlikely, not least because deliberately sparking a row with Turkey right now would be crazy, given its centrality to addressing the situation in Syria. (The White House was troubled enough to issue a statement denying any such inference , and Erdogan has now added his voice , calling Obama "a friend who never falls short of respect or politeness".) Perhaps there's also an issue of cross-cultural symbolism here. In America, a baseball bat can connote violence, but primarily, it connotes a beloved national pastime in which sportsmen and spectators gather in stadiums across the country to eat snacks. On the other side of the ocean, the connotation is mainly just the former. In any case, I think everyone's missing the real mystery about official White House photos of the Oval Office, which is: what's the deal with those apples ? Does anyone ever eat any of those apples ? Are those apples replaced daily, this being the White House, or do Obama's staff wait until they start to go off? Are those apples even real apples? Were they born in America? Finally, please note that this short blogpost has spared you any excruciating puns about how most American diplomatic gaffes these days involve not a baseball bat but a Mitt . You're welcome.