When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.
March 23, 2021 10:18 AM Subscribe
Guardian Long Read. Boris Johnson is the archetypal clown, with his antic posturing and his refusal to take anything seriously. So how did he end up in charge?
“From the people who brought you The Crown – the epic saga of the Queen – now comes the ridiculous story of this guy, a notorious buffoon at the head of a country … The Clown.”
“From the people who brought you The Crown – the epic saga of the Queen – now comes the ridiculous story of this guy, a notorious buffoon at the head of a country … The Clown.”
The problem with "you know, that dumbass politician, Johnson..." has too many possibilities if you also pay attention to USA politics. I only know of one dumbass on the world's state named Boris.
posted by sideshow at 11:02 AM on March 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by sideshow at 11:02 AM on March 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
Going the Shakespeare route was deeply depressing, because it makes it harder to pretend that this is all just a one-off bout of idiocy rather than a deep-seated thing that'll just keep recurring through the ages.
posted by aramaic at 11:05 AM on March 23, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 11:05 AM on March 23, 2021 [3 favorites]
I’m pretty sure stupid people making bad decisions is here for the long haul.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:08 AM on March 23, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:08 AM on March 23, 2021 [5 favorites]
... but that's the point of it -- they're not stupid decisions (that is to say, they are not decisions made out of stupidity) they're decisions which are objectively stupid (that is, the decision itself is stupid) but which are made out of a form of malice that for various reasons people are deeply unable to come to grips with.
Argh, that was a confusing sentence. I need better vocabulary.
posted by aramaic at 11:26 AM on March 23, 2021 [13 favorites]
Argh, that was a confusing sentence. I need better vocabulary.
posted by aramaic at 11:26 AM on March 23, 2021 [13 favorites]
I have friends who have worked zero and one degree of separation from BoJo.
This rather discursive article nails it in one sense:
"What the trickster wants most of all … is for you to admire his trickery."
This is the key. He can't deal with dissapointing his people - there must be "sunlit uplands", "world beating", "cast iron", "global britain" at the end of delivering bad news, always.
These are not just as rhetorical clownlike lies, nor are they just examples as the article notes of
"...Like all storytellers, he knows the public remember endings, less so beginnings and seldom the middle. He did all he can, he says. He knows it’s not true, but that is what he is selling"
... but they are because deep down the fucking clown needs to be admired and loved.
posted by lalochezia at 11:28 AM on March 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
This rather discursive article nails it in one sense:
"What the trickster wants most of all … is for you to admire his trickery."
This is the key. He can't deal with dissapointing his people - there must be "sunlit uplands", "world beating", "cast iron", "global britain" at the end of delivering bad news, always.
These are not just as rhetorical clownlike lies, nor are they just examples as the article notes of
"...Like all storytellers, he knows the public remember endings, less so beginnings and seldom the middle. He did all he can, he says. He knows it’s not true, but that is what he is selling"
... but they are because deep down the fucking clown needs to be admired and loved.
posted by lalochezia at 11:28 AM on March 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
Neal Postman wrote a book about this style of politics back when it was still mostly hypothetical: Amusing Ourselves to Death. And now that is what is happening. We have a "news" network that is on record in court saying it is not a news network. We have a lawyer who three months ago made a public case for a military coup now saying in court that no reasonable person would have taken her case as actual truth.
I am not amused.
posted by ocschwar at 11:28 AM on March 23, 2021 [19 favorites]
I am not amused.
posted by ocschwar at 11:28 AM on March 23, 2021 [19 favorites]
I want to call the B-word the C-word but instead I'll just say that this writeup is very apt. He is so utterly divorced from consequence that even in the most dire of situations it feels like he considers this all a great lark.
He sounds like he's cosplaying a wartime PM when he's being serious. He said he takes full responsibility for how COVID was handled in the UK and then does nothing to take responsibility.
I regularly feel like Jesse at the end of Breaking Bad just screaming in incredulity that "he can't keep getting away with this!"
posted by slimepuppy at 11:48 AM on March 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
He sounds like he's cosplaying a wartime PM when he's being serious. He said he takes full responsibility for how COVID was handled in the UK and then does nothing to take responsibility.
I regularly feel like Jesse at the end of Breaking Bad just screaming in incredulity that "he can't keep getting away with this!"
posted by slimepuppy at 11:48 AM on March 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
"In this paradoxical way, Johnson’s very essence summons the end of everything Conservatives most revere..."
There are parallels with Trump there. US conservatives worship capitalism, and yet they choose Trump, whose capitalism is merely performative: his money inherited, his actual business ventures failures. His only successes are in bilking the crowds that he's bamboozled.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:10 PM on March 23, 2021 [11 favorites]
There are parallels with Trump there. US conservatives worship capitalism, and yet they choose Trump, whose capitalism is merely performative: his money inherited, his actual business ventures failures. His only successes are in bilking the crowds that he's bamboozled.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:10 PM on March 23, 2021 [11 favorites]
Most depressing fact, for me: when we watched his antics back at university, we all already knew that this is how/where he’d end up. (And we’d end up.)
posted by progosk at 12:40 PM on March 23, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by progosk at 12:40 PM on March 23, 2021 [3 favorites]
White men fail upward. News at 11.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:53 PM on March 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:53 PM on March 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
a dim congregation of rude mechanicals
there's your sockpuppet name of the day
posted by chavenet at 12:53 PM on March 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
there's your sockpuppet name of the day
posted by chavenet at 12:53 PM on March 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
What I find really concerning is that when court jesters were a thing they (afaik) acted as a foil for the king and sometimes quiet wisdom. The jester was never the king ... so do we have a king in the deep background, or just an (dangerous) idiot.
posted by unearthed at 1:44 PM on March 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by unearthed at 1:44 PM on March 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
There are parallels with Trump there.
Indeed there are, but let’s keep this focused on BJ in the UK, OK?
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:44 PM on March 23, 2021 [5 favorites]
Indeed there are, but let’s keep this focused on BJ in the UK, OK?
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:44 PM on March 23, 2021 [5 favorites]
Thank you Ten Cold Hot Dogs, that link is an excellent assessment and the comments are not to be missed either.
posted by adamvasco at 2:15 PM on March 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by adamvasco at 2:15 PM on March 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm generally skeptical of conspiracy theories, but I 100% believe that getting stuck on that zipline was deliberate.
successfully ziplining = middle class & embarrassing & not newsworthy
getting stuck = charming mishap, after all, they don't teach ziplining at Eton
He's not stupid and he's not failing. Or I should say that he hasn't failed yet. Brexit happened. Boris Johnson is a power-hungry nihilist playing at being a Wodehouse character.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:23 PM on March 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
successfully ziplining = middle class & embarrassing & not newsworthy
getting stuck = charming mishap, after all, they don't teach ziplining at Eton
He's not stupid and he's not failing. Or I should say that he hasn't failed yet. Brexit happened. Boris Johnson is a power-hungry nihilist playing at being a Wodehouse character.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:23 PM on March 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
Boris Johnson seems about as close to a real-life Zaphod Beeblebrox as politics has yet produced. Except instead of the shadowy cabal secretly relying on the quiet wisdom of an obscure nobody naive to their own power to make decisions, the two-faced bombast really is in charge.
posted by biogeo at 2:44 PM on March 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 2:44 PM on March 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
let’s keep this focused on BJ in the UK, OK?
Are we not doing "phrasing" anymore?
posted by soundguy99 at 2:52 PM on March 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
Are we not doing "phrasing" anymore?
posted by soundguy99 at 2:52 PM on March 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
Excellent article - thanks for posting it. Now I want to reread Bakhtin on the carnivalesque. I don’t think these transgressive inversions of power were meant to last so damn long.
posted by zenzenobia at 4:31 PM on March 23, 2021
posted by zenzenobia at 4:31 PM on March 23, 2021
Are we not doing "phrasing" anymore?
It's the UK so it's "said the actress to the bishop".
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:01 PM on March 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
It's the UK so it's "said the actress to the bishop".
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:01 PM on March 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
"We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.
The air is not a mirror but bare board,
Coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro
And comic color of the rose, in which
Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips
Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them."
-Wallace Stevens: Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction
posted by clavdivs at 7:49 PM on March 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
The air is not a mirror but bare board,
Coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro
And comic color of the rose, in which
Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips
Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them."
-Wallace Stevens: Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction
posted by clavdivs at 7:49 PM on March 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
I think this is good about what Boris Johnson is as a person.
But by accident or design, he's ended up leading a distinct political movement at a distinct moment in time.
For a long time in British politics, the "centre" meant being liberal on social issues, (pre-populist) conservative on economic issues. Privatisation and gay marriage for example.
That was never particularly appealing to a large section of voters who are conservative on social issues and left wing on economic issues. Rail nationalisation and bringing back hanging are both popular polices which were outside the Blair/Brown/Cameron centre.
Perhaps driven by advisors like Dominic Cummings, perhaps by himself (he's not as dumb as he pretends) Boris Johnson is trying to create a new political movement that's conservative on social issues, but not so much on economic issues. He's happy with high deficits and intervention in the economy, though COVID may have tested that. He's also in favour of culture wars over flags and statues.
Bear in mind the conservative ideology of low deficits has always been more rhetorical than real.
It's not certain that Boris Johnson will be able to keep this up: some of the party aren't happy and there is pressure from the Rishi Sunak's to go back to more traditional conservatism.
But the threat from Boris Johnson isn't just from his personality or his carelessness. It's that he's leading a new coalition of fuck-business populists, who can outflank opposition parties by being willing to actively harm business and the economy in pursuit of populist ideology, as well as launching attacks on civil liberties.
At the moment, no opposition parties seem to have an answer for that except to hope that he falls flat on his face somehow.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:56 AM on March 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
But by accident or design, he's ended up leading a distinct political movement at a distinct moment in time.
For a long time in British politics, the "centre" meant being liberal on social issues, (pre-populist) conservative on economic issues. Privatisation and gay marriage for example.
That was never particularly appealing to a large section of voters who are conservative on social issues and left wing on economic issues. Rail nationalisation and bringing back hanging are both popular polices which were outside the Blair/Brown/Cameron centre.
Perhaps driven by advisors like Dominic Cummings, perhaps by himself (he's not as dumb as he pretends) Boris Johnson is trying to create a new political movement that's conservative on social issues, but not so much on economic issues. He's happy with high deficits and intervention in the economy, though COVID may have tested that. He's also in favour of culture wars over flags and statues.
Bear in mind the conservative ideology of low deficits has always been more rhetorical than real.
It's not certain that Boris Johnson will be able to keep this up: some of the party aren't happy and there is pressure from the Rishi Sunak's to go back to more traditional conservatism.
But the threat from Boris Johnson isn't just from his personality or his carelessness. It's that he's leading a new coalition of fuck-business populists, who can outflank opposition parties by being willing to actively harm business and the economy in pursuit of populist ideology, as well as launching attacks on civil liberties.
At the moment, no opposition parties seem to have an answer for that except to hope that he falls flat on his face somehow.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:56 AM on March 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
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p.s. please don't let this thread be full of "Boris" this and that, we don't use his chosen clown name in adult conversation
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 10:44 AM on March 23, 2021 [15 favorites]