Column by By Perro de Jong. An interesting experiment at Cornell University, about a decade ago: you give someone a Barry Manilow T-shirt, send him into a room full of students...a breed not exactly known for its warm love of Barry Manilow. And guess what? The number of students who actually notice the T-shirt turns out to be not even half of what the embarrassed wearer believes.

The truth is we could probably flail our arms wildly and emit repeated whoops of Ekki Ekki Ekki P'tang, without anyone in our immediate vicinity getting the impression there's something unusual going on. It's a different story, though, the moment there's a camera involved.
 
One thing you learn in radio is that a second of 'dead air' can feel like an eternity. Well, multiply that by two hundred and you begin to have an idea of housing and integration minister Ella Vogelaar's recent ordeal as the Dutch website Geen Stijl continued to film her for several minutes after she said she wouldn't answer any more questions.
 
Insult to rabbits
To say Ms Vogelaar looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights would frankly be an insult to rabbits. If anything, she looked like someone to whom spontaneous human combustion was beginning to look like an attractive option. Does that make her a bad minister? Maybe not, but the impression will be harder to get rid of than the stains on a certain blue dress worn by a certain White House intern.
 
And speaking of the White House: I can't help but think that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are facing the same kind of unenviable choice as the Dutch minister. Either they play nice and are derided as weaklings who can't cope with a bit of healthy competition, or they bare their teeth and cause such damage that the eventual nominee will be bleeding all the way to the polls.
 
In other words: damned if you do, damned if you don't.
 
I've been wondering if there's any way out that doesn't involve hitting the self-destruct button. Of course making sure there are no cameras near is one option. Take me for instance...I'm told I have a great face for radio, but I don't mind. At least in the studio you can hear yourself think. And if I have the movements of a lovesick rhinoceros as I shuffle around behind the microphone, who cares? But then I'm not a minister, let alone a presidential candidate.
 
Opinio scoop
Still, if there's one thing more powerful than the eye of the camera; it's precisely the absence of a camera verifying what happened. And it seems that the more we are used to a camera always being there, the more easily we are misled if there isn't one.
 
Opinio is one of the few Dutch magazines that don't give me an urge to get on the next plane and emigrate. It's international, it's literate and it accommodates genuine differences of opinion, which is much harder than it sounds. And it's rewarded for all this with a readership that's slightly smaller than that of the journal of the Dutch Rare Pets' Association.
 
Recently, though, Opinio had a scoop: the 'secret speech' of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, in which he for the first time acknowledged not only that Islam was a problem, but that Dutch Christians were fed up with the new kid on the block hogging the limelight.
 
After reading just three sentences I was rolling off my seat over what turned out to be a clever but deadly parody of the prime-minister. And a thought-provoking one too.
 
Reputation at stake
Sadly, Mr Balkenende begs to differ. After trying and failing to get an injunction against Opinio he's now taking the magazine to court in a standard procedure, something that's almost unprecedented for the leader of a Dutch government.
 
His argument: that certain people abroad may take the pastiche to be a real Balkenende-speech, thus damaging not only his reputation but endangering the Netherlands' political standing.
 
Well, the moment an embassy is burnt down because some Dutch journalist impersonated Jan Peter Balkenende, I'll be the first to let you know. And the moment a judge closes down Opinio because of its belated April-fools prank, I'll do the same...although I might be too busy packing my suitcases.
 
In the meantime, maybe someone should send prime-minister Balkenende out into the street in a Barry Manilow T-shirt. Just to see what happens...