On Sunday, a local TV channel in Moscow claimed that John Tefft, U.S. ambassador to Russia, attended an opposition demonstration. The accusations are serious in Russia, where pro-government media frequently accuse activists of being U.S. puppets.
Посол США в России Джон Ф. Тефт прогулялся на митинге оппозиции в Марьино: http://t.co/JwnUewrm6i
The photo, the embassy replied, was a crude fake. "Ambassador Tefft spent his day off yesterday at home," it tweeted. "But thanks to Photoshop, he could be anywhere." Like attending the moon landing...
.@rentvchannel
A hockey game...
.@rentvchannel
Or landing in the Philippines with Douglas MacArthur.
.@rentvchannel
Other Russian Twitter users posted memes of Tefft attending random Russian people's weddings...
Я и мой босс Джон Теффт попали на свадьба один хороший человек сегодня!
And surrounded by cats.
Найди котэ на картинке #Теффт Find a cat on this picture. #Tefft
The memes racked up nearly 600 retweets, making it an extremely rare instance of the U.S. government using memes successfully. Most of its forays into social media are... less than good.
Посол Теффт провёл вчерашний выходной дома. Но благодаря фотошопу можно оказаться где угодно. #fake #фейк
The State Department has taken a particularly hard beating on Russia's vibrant internet. The embassy runs a Russian-language account, @UkrProgress, that tweets about Ukraine under the portentous hashtag #HourOfTruth, to widespread mockery.
.@Rabochii: Если #Россию волнует судьба народа #Украины, #Кремль должен прекратить насилие. #ЧасПравды
Tefft's predecessor, Michael McFaul, frequently ran into trouble over his obsessive tweeting. He still argues with Russians who troll him on an almost daily basis, often in barely grammatical Russian.
It is the job of the diplomat -- Russian American or other - to pursue the national interest as defined by the diplomat's government.
Tefft, a veteran diplomat who takes pride in his collection of unusual hats, has taken a different approach — he's not even on social media at all.
Moral of the story: ~never tweet.~
Correction
One of the memes depicts Tefft landing in the Philippines with Douglas MacArthur in 1945. An earlier version of this post described it as the D-Day landing in Normandy a year earlier.