George Clooney attended the European Political Community Summit in Yerevan, Armenia, last week and there is a clip of him on social media shaking hands with the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, his left hand firmly planted in his pants pocket. In Poland – in Europe generally, but perhaps especially in the Slavic countries – it is impolite, if not disrespectful, to greet someone with your hand in your pocket. Nabokov wrote critically of American delegations to Moscow standing with their Russian counterparts while benightedly keeping their hands in their pockets. My students in Warsaw would not dream of speaking to me, their teacher, with their hands in their pockets. I’m surprised Amal Clooney, who is British-Lebanese, didn’t teach her husband proper etiquette for these occasions.
