The Grand Tour: Gordon Brown, Obama/Jindal, Explosive Times Square, and the BP Boys

1. If slapstick is the genre that typically fits Brown best, “film noir” seems to work here, especially if the Prime Minister washes out this week.

2. This WH Flickr photo is a PR slam-dunk.  It offers Obama … out front of the environmental disaster; modeling bipartisanship; and it captures Jindal, a potential Obama rival, buddying up to the President in admiring fashion — which is not going to win any favors with the base come election time.

3. If the World Trade Center was an obvious symbolic target, this photo by Chris Hondros contemplates the meaning of Times Square as a terror focus, and the potential consequences of a successful attack given how cities are turning particular downtown zones into playgrounds.

4. Seems like an all too familiar drill this past year, putting human faces to offending corporations. Then, as incredible as it might seem, looking at BP’s CEO skipping away from the Interior Department, with chest out and arms swinging, that’s swagger.

Captions and photo credits:

Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown with his wife Sarah, look out of a rain soaked car window in central London after a day of election campaigning, late Saturday May 1, 2010. Britain’s political parties are campaigning ahead of the General Election scheduled for May 6. (AP Photo/Lewis Whyld, PA)

President Barack Obama talks with U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen, who is serving as the National Incident Commander, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, aboard Marine One as they fly along the coastline from Venice to New Orleans, La., May 2, 2010. John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, is in the background. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

A man watches from tables in Times Square near sunrise a few blocks from where a crude car bomb had been parked at 45th Street and 7th Avenue May 2, 2010 in New York, New York. Police found a crude but potentially powerful bomb in vehicle in Times Square and disabled it, clearing out the famous intersection of thousands of tourists on a busy Saturday night. (Photo by Chris Hondros/2010 Getty Images)

BP Chairman Lamar McKay, left, and BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward, right, leave the Department of the Interior following their closed door meeting in Washington, Monday, April 3, 2010. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)