Comments on: Meet the Bigots: When Popular Culture and Unpopular Politicians Collide

By: Jeffrey Jones

Jeffrey Jones — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:11:58 +0000

My question is not whether the press is “shocked” as much as whether this is the kind of journalism that becomes interesting to do. In other words, is the British press simply tired of the old ways and actually find such fruckuses stimulating “reporting”? Karin might be able to answer this better than most of us.

By: Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:33:50 +0000

Cornell, thanks for this interesting reading of an incident which seems to already have become central to the narrative of this campaign. I think it’s taken on such importance among journalists (as opposed to voters, for whom it appears to have made little difference)precisely because they were desperate for gaffes. At a time where British politicians increasingly borrow from the presentational styles of their American counterparts, and make concerted (if not always successful) efforts to aspire to their slickness, journalists appear to be missing the drama of politicians behaving like humans and speaking their minds.
I don’t think this hunger for gaffes and signs of humanity is unique to this election but it’s hugely accelerated after the rise of the compellingly polished Conservative leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg whose perfection and, in my eyes, blandness, has taken away much of the humanity and drama of the campaign. They’re the harbingers of a new era in British politics which is leaving behind people who (a) forget to take off their microphones and (b) occasionally speak their minds.

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Sat, 01 May 2010 14:43:14 +0000

It’s the pronoun in your last par. that has me thinking, Cornel — when you say it’s normalised “our” reading, where does that “we” begin and end, do you think? To me, yes, it’s banal, and something I feel I’ve seen multiple times before. But is there a large chunk of the British population, do you think, to whom this would still have been shocking and new? I know the media’s certainly been reporting on it as if everyone should be and is appalled and shocked by it, but maybe the largest chunk of un-properly-political-satire-savvy viewers left is the press corps itself, meaning they’re more shocked than others? Dunno — just thinking out loud here