lolcat politics

Stolen from a friend...
Marina Hyde says it better than I probably could.

Indeed. It's started already, and the next day we have what is probably the first politico"gate" of the this here silly season.

You can take the politics...

It was a month since I tried to demonstrate the important difference between lolitics and not-lolitics and I had promised to follow up with an explanation of why political humour can sometimes be damaging to political discourse. I have not forgotten about this promise.

I had started by writing a commentary on the whole BNP/Question Time debate to compare the notion of political debate on the BBC with that of political punditry in the USA. By the time I had finished my 'draft' it was over two thousand words long and not yet finished. I wanted to comb through it to give it some finesse when it dawned on me that something frightening was happening.

Two thousand words sounds very much like an essay draft to me.

It seems that you can take the girl out of the politics degree, but you can't take the politics degree out of the girl. Not that there's anything wrong with writing politics essays when one doesn't have to, but I was alarmed to find myself doing it mostly out of habit.

Nobody wants to be writing politics essays "out of habit" and I doubt anybody wants to read such essays either. So instead I've been intently following America's Next Top Model and Project Runway and making a concerted effort to avoid any broadcasting or commentary involving X-Factor. I've left my embryonic essay on the back boiler for now. I'll return to it at some point soon.

we march on

This week the public service broadcasting of potentially shocking and offensive infamous persons dominated the public discourse.

Hoorah for free speech. The liberal assertion that if you give somebody a platform to show themselves then their truly outrageous countenance will be revealed and open for all to see and criticize, was gratified with evidence. Free-minded liberals can rest on their laurels in smug self-validation.

Their argument was proven correct this week, and anyone who missed it can see the results here.

As my family and I sat and watched things unfold, I realised I wasn't entirely sure I still agreed that the BBC should have made the decision to continue with the broadcast. It was incredibly uncomfortable viewing. I couldn't quite believe my ears and eyes, yet they remained glued to the tellybox. Yes, this actually happened. Irrefutable proof that giving a controversial figure an audience will be compulsive viewing, albeit for all the wrong reasons.




Really, what is this Yoko?! (You have to get to the end to see the full effect, but I don't blame you if you don't get there)

lol and not-lol

Politics is almost always funny. It is a built-in feature of UK politics, with its weekly Punch and Judy puppet show of put-downs and pantomiming during Prime Minister's Questions. I really do miss the days when Spitting Image was on the tellybox (I tried to find a video of the famous vegetable scene but couldn't find it, alas). I was only a kid at the time, but got most of my elementary political training through that show; what kid wouldn't find the name Virginia Bottomley inherently hysterical?

Radio 4's the Now Show and the ubiquitous Private Eye are decent substitutes, but it's not the same without those rude latex puppets to comment on the political circus.

But sometimes political humour amounts to no more than standard 'circle of shame' celebrity gossip. Some folks go so far as to call it "showbusiness for ugly people" so it's important to be able to distinguish between real political lolz (lolitics) and gutter-level gossip humour.

Take the blog Glum Councillors, for instance. It's marvellous, and funny because it's true. Anyone who has ever been involved in local politics, or even seen the front page of a local newspaper, can relate to the visual pot-hole-itical (sorry) outrage documented on this site.

I also like this nifty little game which gives the UK party conference speeches a magnetic poetry twist, even though it is biased, which is also funny, but a shame as I feel I miss out on some extra game play value.

Lol news is an obvious example of lolitics, based on the popular "I can has Cheezburger" meme:

moar funny pictures

This silly season story about South Carolina's Governor Sanford was perfectly ludicrous as it unfolded. Sanford will go down (sorry) in history for contributing the phrase "hiking the Appalachian Trail" to the catalogue of euphemisms for describing that common phenomena of "abandoning your governing duties to visit your mistress in Argentina." His 'apology' speech was beautiful car crash television. His stance on family values and his refusal to resign gave lefties excellent fodder for humiliation and reds-roasting. But it's nothing more than glorified gossip. It masquerades as politics because Governor Sanford is, indeed, a Governor. Boy, did I get a kick out of it, but I ain't going to pretend that the extended coverage it received from pundits was anything more than partisan nit-picking. I don't have a problem with gutter level gossip humour, and this is funny, but not strictly political.

This story about Obama allegedly snubbing Brown just annoyed me, moreso because the BBC fell for it. First of all, it was a classic example of a "So and So denies Such and Such" headline which almost inevitably results in a non-story based upon (biased) journo-rumour-milling. Second of all, it had no substance and no consequence. The BBC, with a mandate to remain politically neutral, made a mistake in covering this story so heavily because the story came across as partisan poking at the PM's unpopularity vis a vis Obama. This story failed to be either funny or political.

Political humour doesn't have to be neutral of course. That would defeat the purpose most of the time. Partisan agendas are a natural and priceless aspect of the sport and that's a-ok. The world of lolitics is fraught with danger though: danger of being wide off the humour mark, and danger of damaging the political discourse. I'll talk about the latter, later.

Beef Jerkies

Orwell demonstrated that economics becomes a lot more understandable when explained using barnyard animals; so I enjoyed the BBC's "Sacred Cow or Prime Cuts" quiz at the party conferences (watch them here: Lib Dem, Labour, Tory). Politicians mince their words over the difficult decisions that will prevail in the post-recession period. We can certainly expect public services to become more "value brand" as the government (regardless of party) will have to attempt to balance the budget after the bail-out blow-outs.

The good news is that we can however expect a more beefed up experience in Burger King. Sadly, where I live does not allow fast food chains to be franchised in the town, and my mate never took that job as Assistant Manager of Burger King, so that's a potential business employment opportunity scuppered for me. Probably a good thing because, if the McVideo Game is anything to go by, I'd be useless at it anyway. I did consider going back to my old job as a 'Sandwich Artist' in a well known sandwich bar, but that's one of my last resort options along with going back to temping. I'm hoping that my days of asking customers if they would like "six inches" are well and truly over.

But this service sector student experience might have its uses in another field. I would like to suggest that given their record, MPs might not have the most satisfactory experience in finding good "50% off" deals or in every-day rationing. Surely supermarket employees and poor students/pensioners/families who are used to stretching their weekly pocket money and finding the best value brand products have the most relevant budgeting skills required to keep the country ticking on a tiny budget? Bob from check-out to the Treasury please...

lolitics

It's been conference season for the three main UK political parties, and other than the usual mixture of socks and sandals and snide, there has been very little to report in the realm of lol. This week is the last of the big three, the Tory Conference, which reminds me of this historical lolitical gem courtesy of facetube.

Announcement: The Tory party have just announced that they plan to take policy advice from the cast of High School Musical, reminding the UK population that "We are all in this together".