As hyperpartisan Photoshops go, this one is surprisingly well done. Maybe I'm just thrilled he's not wearing a turban.
We all who are not Russian spambots know the old expression about Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Clearly it is a durable metaphor, since it survived as a commonplace when much of the rest of western culture—including such minor elements as engineering and physiology—was lost with the fall of the Empire. Yet the fiddle was not invented until a millennium after the Great Fire, as any smug prick will tell you. This sketches an interesting narrative: the image “Nero sings while Rome burns” or “Nero plays the lyre while Rome burns” had to reproduce as a viable meme for a thousand years, only to mutate into the much more viable strain “Nero fiddles while Rome burns” upon the invention of the violin—or, more likely, upon the convergence of the terms “fiddle” to play the violin and “fiddle” to screw around. Besides presenting a rad instance of ideational evolution, this progression is a testament to the power of human beings to envision collapse in their own time. Because today is the last thing that ever happened, present times invariably seem like end times. I’m sure Nero remarked on the phenomenon often.
