Tuesday 25 November 2008

A Thought on the Crisis

What's to say that hasn't been said (or rather not said) in the Other Place? All I will note is that throughout this crisis, Broon has been flashing that terrifying smile of his and giving the impression of being on some poweful euphoriant drug. When the going was good, he sported, equally incongruously, that jowly, pouchy scowl of his at all times and never cracked a smile. Unfortunately he only has these two expressions at his disposal, and seems incapable of modifying either of them - unlike the great snake oil salesman, his predecessor, who could fake a range of finely nuanced expression for any occasion. The effect of Broon's bipolar face is to suggest a drastic disconnection from what is actually going on. He should be feeling our pain, shouldn't he, not grinning away as if everything's fine and dandy? A man who is actually made happy by crisis has a very strange idea of pleasure. It is another aspect of his not-quite-human quality - the quality that, I have always maintained, makes him ultimately unelectable.

4 comments:

  1. Very eloquently put Nige. As I sat in front of the confuser last night, drowning in apoplexy, a red faced, spluttering, muttering wreck, all that I could think of was to describe the Saviour of the nation as a nonce let loose in a nursery. Your comments have removed his goolies with a scalpel and hung them from the tower.
    I hear that Oddie has complained about the Ravens new diet.

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  2. Have you ever noticed the way TV news anchors are always smiling, even when they're delivering the most horrible news? "Thirty-seven people killed in a car accident on I-95" smile, smile, "apparently caused by a jack-knifed tractor trailer," grin, and so on.

    Same effect, I think.

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  3. Britons in general love a good crisis. Belt-tightening, back to basics, spirit of the Blitz yadda yadda.

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  4. Wouldn't change one word of that Nige - just wish you had pushed on a little further and sucked little Darling into your orbit.
    Yes, the spawn of the manse is an odd cove, a man not quite comfortable in his skin, and without the elan to hide the fact from us. Grocer Heath was much the same until the image boys got hold of him, telling him when to smile, when to look grim.
    A better tailor might help too; when his jacket is buttoned, which is almost always (unlike Snakeoil), he always seems to be bursting out of it. There must be a slapper image consultant at central office who could have a word in his shell-like?

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