Now that Silvio Berlusconi is out of the picture, who is going to put the fun back into international diplomacy? Judging by his appearances at recent photocalls in New York City, Cannes and on Sunday in Hawaii, Barack Obama could be that man.
According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:
At one point, Gillard swiped at her hair and made an undecipherable comment. Obama then gestured toward his own head of hair and said, “Me, too,” to laughter from the other APEC dignitaries.
A conversation between Obama and Gillard could be overheard with talk of grass skirts and coconut bras before Chilean President Sebastian Pinera Echenique asked, "Where are the Hawaiian shirts?"
Obama replied: "We are ending that tradition."
There had been some speculation that the aloha shirts were scrapped to avoid the appearance of world leaders acting frivolous during a time of economic austerity. Asked about the decision, Obama said leaders were given an aloha shirt, "And if they wanted to wear the shirt I promise you it would've been fine. But I didn't hear a lot of complaints about us breaking precedent on that one."
He said he had looked at past family photos, "and some of the garb that had appeared previously, and I thought: this may be a tradition that we might want to break."
Read more on the silliness that ensued at the 'family photo' shoot here and check out a more serious take on the conference here.



Three To Do While Taking a group picture:
1. Stand straight.
2. Smile.
3. Straighten up that hair.
===========================
To endure-
A bit of wind, brought on by Mother Nature.
.
Back home in America families are losing everything.
There home, jobs, and everything else.... Our leader takes another photo - op.
United We Stand, Divided we fall.
@rockyroad - you should read the last line of your post, and then revise your divisive second line to reflect it.
Rockyroad, Hawaii IS America (duh!). AND, if we host an economic summit, don't you think that our President should be there? (duh!).
Some posters will look for anything to criticize. All the economic problems today resulted from years and years of abuse and corruption by politicians from other era's. By all accounts the decline started in late 2007. Obama has tried to do the best he could with what was left to him. Anyone with half a brain knows this. He may have made some errors in Judgement in office, but then no one had any experience with this, especially John McCain, by his own admission.
forgive rockyroad, for he is a birther looney and believes hawaii is a foreign country !
it is you who is being divisive.
Its a nice light-hearted picture :-)
Agree. We need to see more of these in these tough times.
Again, lousy journalism. Did they accomplish anything? What was the group hug about?
G
Who really cares?
I'm glad the president has them laughing. This summit is a really big deal. In another article from this morning it looks like President Obama is taking it to the Chinese. China's unfair trade policies and currency manipulation is our biggest threat.
We need to be careful with the Chinese, they may decide to call in all the loans the U.S. has with them. With the state of our economy, should we be telling anybody how to run theirs?