The Unbearable Lightness of Pen Stealing

Having been caught red-handed pocketing a valuable ceremonial ballpoint pen on video, Czech prez Václav Klaus is now being inundated with offers of writing implements from Czechs showing faux concern. A Facebook page with over 5,000 fans urges to send pens, pencils and other writing instruments to the presidential office on May 2 “as he obviously has nothing to write with.”

Klaus has meanwhile defended his pen-nabbing as something which is perfectly normal at ceremonial events. According to ABC News, he says he has a pen from October’s NATO Summit in Lisbon and a notepad from the Latvian Parliament. Some sources say, however, that the pen was encrusted with semiprecious Chilean lapis lazuli – hardly a nickable souvenir.

Watching the video again, his secreting of the pen looks a bit too surreptitious to constitute guiltless, normal behaviour.