"I don't think it's wrong when prime ministers cry . . ."
-- former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt to the BBC in 2014
Does anyone remember the great selfie scandal of 2013?
It involved American President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron at a memorial service for Nelson Mandela held in a soccer stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Photographer Roberto Schmidt of global news agency AFP took a photo of Cameron and Obama leaning in on either side of a woman who was holding out an iPhone to take a photo of herself with the world leaders.
When Schmidt's photo was widely published, Cameron faced some criticism from members of Parliament for "larking about at a funeral." In this country, some people commented on how Michelle Obama--who is in Schmidt's photograph but not participating in the selfie--seemed to be looking sternly straight ahead in the universal sign of spousal disapproval.
Schmidt later wrote he took the photo "totally spontaneously, without thinking about what impact [it] might have" and that he didn't really understand what the fuss was about. It showed the world leaders "simply acting like human beings." He said it was wrong to suggest Michelle was put out with the others.
"Photos can lie," Schmidt wrote. "In reality, just a few seconds earlier the first lady was herself joking with those around her . . . Her stern look was captured by chance."
Cameron brushed off the criticism with a joke, and if Obama ever dignified the opportunistic sniping the selfie occasioned, well, I don't remember it. What I do remember is the event in question wasn't exactly a funeral but a four-hour tribute to the life and works of the beloved Mandela, featuring singing and dancing. It was a big party, with more than 70 heads of state in attendance rubbing shoulders with hundreds of members of the glitterati. For the record, George W. Bush also took a selfie at the event, with U2 singer Bono.
The woman in the middle between Cameron and Obama, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was the instigator who took the picture and the brunt of the outrage. U.K. newspaper the Daily Mail called her a "narcissist." The New York Post's answer to the Weekly World News' Ed Anger, Amanda Peyser, exocriated her as "a Danish hellcat" hiking "up her skirt to expose long Scandinavian legs covered by nothing more substantial than sheer black stockings."
And the Danish media called for her to explain herself.
"There were lots of pictures taken that day, and I just thought it was a bit of fun," she told Danish newspaper Berlingske. "Maybe it also shows that when we meet heads of state and government, we too are just people who have fun."
It's easy to forget that sometimes. Whether or not you approve of selfies, they are something human beings do. And I'm in favor of moments of when the mask slips and our politicians express emotions and opinions unvetted by focus groups and unmotivated by agenda.
I didn't think about Ms. Thorning-Schmidt (no relation to the photographer) until recently; she is apparently the chief model for one of my favorite TV characters, Birgitte Nyborg (played by Sidse Babett Knudsen, who you might recognize from HBO's "Westworld"), the character at the center of political drama "Borgen," which started streaming on Netflix last September.
Or maybe that's not strictly so, since "Borgen" (which translates as "castle" and is what the Danes call their Parliament) went on the air two years before Thorning-Schmidt was elected. Maybe life followed art to some degree, with Thorning-Schmidt based in part on Nyborg.
But Thorning-Schmidt was a rising star in Danish politics for years before "Borgen" went on the air in late 2010, and I can't pretend to know enough about Danish politics to sort it all out. Just understand that Nyborg's fictional career rhymes with Thorning-Schmidt's actual one in some interesting ways. Both seem to occupy what in Denmark would seem to be the center-left and what, in this country, would be reflexively obliterated by wild-eyed radical leftism by those who imagine themselves loyal to the ancien régime in a country drfiting rightward. And both have endearingly human private lives which occasionally cause them to moments of public embarrassment.
My favorite Thorning-Schmidt scandal occurred in 2012, when she saw Sarah Jessica Parker signing autographs for fans on the streets of Oslo, Norway. She stopped her car and ran over to the "Sex and the City" star, exciting announcing herself as "the Danish prime minister."
Some people thought that was embarrassing. I thought it was adorable.
Anyway, in "Borgen," Nyborg's private life gets at least as much attention as her adventures in politics (which skew toward nuanced realistic banality--I've never watched "The West Wing" but I can't imagine a show designed for American audiences would focus so much on the logistics of coalition building).
We've watched Nyborg negotiate the end of her marriage (Thorning-Schmidt had to weather an investigation of her husband's taxes and whispers that he was gay) and her teenage daughter's stress-related breakdown.
And sometimes "Borgen" seems remarkably prescient, In the third season, Nyborg is no longer prime minister but mounting a comeback by starting a third party in response to her old party, the Moderates (based on the Danish Social Liberal Party), having made extraordinary concessions to ally itself with the nativist anti- immigrant Freedom Party (based on the actual Danish People's Party, a far right-wing populist party that was ascendant when "Borgen" was being filmed).
The dilemma she and her fellow "defectors" in what they are calling the New Democrats are facing feels very much like what traditional good government Republicans are facing in the post-Trump era. At what point do first principles supersede party loyalty? When does idealism matter more than pragmatism?
Don't misunderstand--"Borgen" is essentially a soap opera, and its subtitles lend it an air of authority that mightn't otherwise possess. You watch it not for the lessons on European politics (though those are worthwhile) but because you get caught up in the melodramas of Nyborg and TV news star Katrine Fonsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) and spindoktorer Kasper Juul. It's entertainment, and as Thorning-Schmidt told the BBC in 2014, "an excellent TV series" . . . that's "got very little to do with my reality or with reality as a politician."
It's probably not as realistic as "Veep." (I wonder whether the character Minna Häkkinen, who in the "Veep" world is prime minister of Finland, wasn't also to some degree based on Thorning-Schmidt.)
I'm almost to the end of "Borgen" and will move on to some other (likely subtitled) streaming crush. The good new is that Netflix has ordered a fourth season of the series, set to debut in 2022.
Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@adgnewsroom.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.