A week of famous bods this week. The celeb endorsements were obvs designed to flog my book (few more to come) but I wanted to also flag up the power and influence that the cult of celebrity has had on politics. It has obviously always had the popularity contest element to it but now, like America, it dominates to such a degree, that nothing else seems to matter anymore. This is nuts when the process involves making a decision about who we choose to govern our country and something that will ultimately affect all our lives so dramatically.
All I seem to hear in this run up to the general election when discussing potential leaders is whether people like them or not. Not what they stand for. Not their policies. Not their actions. But what does it matter? They aren’t going to become your friend. You’re never going to hang out with them or have them over for dinner so who gives a fook if they are ‘your type of person’ or not? What matters is are they competent, decent, intelligent? Are they going to do what is right? Are they going to put the citizens of their country first? Will they serve rather than be self-serving? They need to be leader material not mate material.
We also must accept that our opinions of these people are based on how they have been represented by the media and it is the way they are reported that dictates how we feel about them. We have never met them so it is not based on anything real. We don’t ‘know them’ know them. We just think we know them. We are basing our judgment on a flimsy easily digestible version of them, a 2 dimensional construct that has been fed to us.
We are essentially responding to a ‘character’ that has been ‘created’ to be loved or vilified. It is a perception of a person that has been presented with an intended purpose. The media are deliberately trying to sway you for and against the politicians because they are driven by their own political agenda. They are not objective. It’s not like they just want us to be informed. They are a propaganda machine and not to be trusted. We must see through these motives and we must take this on board before we let it affect the way we vote.
And if you don’t vote you don’t get to complain after and really isn’t that what we live for in this country? Why take away one of your favourite pleasures in life…