Absolute power corrupts one’s dress sense absolutely

If you’re near a laptop and in search of a giggle, go to http://tinyurl.com/6gamb73. Otherwise, let me explain in words: that links you to a gallery of scores of photographs of Muammar Gaddafi in silly clothes. There are images of him in absurd, invented, full military dress, festooned with the gilt and silverware of bogus medals; sashes of every kind, colour and cloth, all gaudy. There are images of the tinpot dictator decked out in purple like a Roman emperor, swathed in silk with turbans, in mid-desert in combat gear, taking the salute in braid and twill, or crowned in gold. Sunglasses of the most bizarre shape and size, a bewildering range of the ludicrous pillbox hats to which he seemed addicted, tiara-like arrangements; khaki and velvet, silk and camelhair… these, it seems, became the ever-expanding wardrobe of his life.

The effect is satirical but from the Colonel’s viewpoint the self-ridicule is unwitting: he honestly thought he looked good in the outfits.

Most of the images are genuine, a few are fake; but it becomes impossible as we view the gallery to differentiate the Photo-shopped grotesqueries created by hostile satirists from the posed pictures he had taken for the benefit of friends. The man became his own comic creation: a pantomime version of himself. Who would have thought, from an early photograph of a neat, unassuming and rather handsome young army officer, that inside that plain and unostentatious uniform beat the heart of a sartorial exhibitionist who would one day leave most drag queens standing?

I was discussing this grisly comedy with friends last week. The debate resolved itself, after the mockery, into a different one: was the Colonel’s fancy dress an indication of the madness of one peculiar individual, or a more general example of the way power and uncritical admiration can corrupt anyone?

I incline unhesitatingly to the second view.