Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Be Brazen, Be Happy
Brazen, that's what we need to be, brazen. Brazen it out. Amaze with your capacity to go beyond embarrassment, guilt, irony and self-doubt. Leave your listeners too stunned to protest, their mouths hanging too wide open to speak. Take Alastair Campbell. While working for Blair, he created a media culture of negativity and he sacrificed fairness and accuracy for speed and sensation. And what does what does he say now? He attacks the media for its culture of negativity and its willingness to sacrifice fairness and accuracy for speed and sensation. See what I mean? Brazen, you can't beat it. Or take his old boss. Blair has taken on yet another job to take his post-PMT (prime ministerial tension) earnings over £7 million. He's advising the Zurich insurance company on climate change. I know more about climate change than Tony Blair; if I had a dog and had taken it on my last trip to see Jim Lovelock it would know more about climate change than Tony Blair. And anyway, er, wasn't he supposed to be sorting out the Middle East? Again, brazen. It is the way of the future.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
My Cumbrian mother used to describe such people as having 'neck for owt but soap'. You might understand this Bryan.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post. Has anyone read Campbell's diaries? On numerous entries he writes retrospectively, for example 'June 1st - We were in Majorca on holiday'. How can this be a diary, rather than a cobbled together, airbrushed rewrite? The political media swoons about 'insight', Campbell staggers to the bank with wads of cash. Meanwhile TB, who was all for bombing Arabs in Iraq, is a Middle East peace envoy - amazing!
ReplyDeleteAh, Bryan, your dog might know about climate change, but could he speak as clearly and magisterially as Blair? "I am very pleased to be taking on this role advising Zurich and in particular supporting its climate initiative. There is a consensus now that the challenge of climate change is real, and what we need now are the policy solutions to turn that concern into action." (Love the fact that the rules prevent him lobbying Gordon until June . . . )
ReplyDeleteBut Tony is a decent sort of bloke isn't he? Who could accuse him of hypocrisy when its all out in the open. Its the stupidity of the public that gets me...I am sure that most dogs know a lot about climate change as being closer to the ground they can see the rising tides more quickly..
ReplyDeleteBryan Bryan Bryan, slow down, easy on the coffee, you are ranting like a lunatic, like some crazed middle aged man desperate to feel young and fiery about something only to find, to his chagrin, that there is nothing in his life worthy of making war upon. You really do need to get out more, to throw off the shackles of your predictable polite day to day and have a real slice of life-threatening adventure, reset the compass. Before you know it, you'll be dust my man and you'll wish you dared a little more than to make angry words about nothing.
ReplyDeleteYou're so right Tramp, I need to get out.
ReplyDeleteBe careful, though...
ReplyDeleteTramp, aren't you currently doing crappy minimum wage data entry and fantasising about being back in the 'ghan with a Gimpy? Your recent adventures consist wholly of buying expensive coats from Zara and getting hypothermia on the Brecon Beacons - get some new adventures before you preach.
ReplyDeleteAha! Zurich was run by Sandy Leitch (Lord Leitch of the New Deal Task Force, National Employment Panel, Skills reviews etc). Has a very nice gaff next to the Ritz. Leitch got the Lordship, now TB gets the moolah. It's a long way from Trimdon Labour club.
ReplyDeleteYes, Bryan, I think you should get a dog. They do know about climate change, too. Who ran for higher ground when the tsunami was advancing on Indonesia? The animals of course; the dogs. Go to the dogs. It's the answer.
ReplyDeleteFrom Mao and the art of management:
ReplyDelete1- Adopt a powerful and mendacious slogan (eg serve the people!/new labour, new britain!)
2- Engage in ruthless media manipulation (see the little red book/meetings with murdoch)
3- Sacrifice friends and colleagues (Mandleson?)
4- Substitute activity for achievement (classic New Labour!)
Exactly.
ReplyDeletePerhaps these ghastly people realise they can now do whatever they please without risk of the proles rising en masse to storm the Bastille and set heads on pikes; so they're doing it.
ReplyDeleteIn time, as with compassion fatigue, there will come outrage fatigue, as we just wearily accept that Henry Kissinger has won the Nobel Peace Prize, or Tony Blair is the Middle East peace missionary. After the sounds of jaws dropping will come the realisation that there's nothing we can do, that Blair/Brown/Bush could appear in public dressed as Hitler and talk warmly of death camps for 'traitors' and aside from a few heated columns, there would be no real reaction, that we no longer expect the deeds & words of politicians to be even remotely anchored in reality. As i think one of Bush's staffers put it, "we make up reality."