Inspired by, well, my own comment in this Straight Dope thread, I took upon the task of making our newly appointed U.N. ambassador smile about something. He does seem ever so dour.

Maybe if he was somewhere sunny…

Ahh… much better.

[EDIT 8/9/05] My old man has called into question whether this is a genuine photograph of John Bolton, or perhaps a Photoshop or an imposter. Take a quick Google Image Search on ‘john bolton’ and see. (I’ll leave it up to you whether to leave ‘SafeSearch’ on or not. Let’s just say the trip could be somewhat more interesting with it off.) Anyway, the gentleman above shows up a few times, but his hair is darker and parted in the opposite direction. No other picture of him looks quite like this one.

The part direction’s no big problem (photos can get flipped easily) The bushy mustache may be trimmed slightly differently, but the chin’s right on:

But even allowing for those something’s not quite right, either with the color or the way it hangs over his forehead.

With all the shadowing and the blue background, what this photo looks like is a bad passport/driver’s license photo. And perhaps it was taken on a day when the future ambassador was in the midst of an unfortunate experiment with a bottle of Grecian Formula. Who knows? ‘Tis a mystery.