The Political Personality Contest...

But first...
I perhaps have a secret shouldn't but would crush on Charlie Brooker, that is despite his hate of the Mac/Apple brand. This is a great satirical look at how to put a tedious news edit together from the brilliant Newswipe (BBC4 Tuesday evenings)...



The following is a clip from the great eye opener, the archive footage meddler,the amazing documentary maker Adam Curtis (taken from the same Newswipe series). The clip shows, briefly, how we have all turned into Richard Nixon - thanks to the people that exposed the man - the media. Actually this is a generation absolutely paranoid to the point of confusion, no one knows who to trust, it isn't the Governement, it isn't the Media, it isn't even ourselves. Perhaps we need someone we can trust in control of everything, maybe Mr Curtis himself could step up - although it is true that he too is guilty of this fear mongering. Maybe Curtis does not belong to the documentary genre but horror genre. Use of archive footage and popular rendering nosalgia and a feeling of the uncanny within us, whilst juxtaposing familiar sights with the 'truth' - which apparently is more terrifying than any poltergiest or zombie b-flick. Is it a wonder then, with all this fear mongering fed on mass to the public, why people don't vote? Take the equation: confusion plus paranoia, then divide the sum by consumption which makes us not give a shit at all really. The average night in front of the news should go a little like this:
"Oh, there's a war on is there? What? It's illegal and the Tony Blair tricked us all? That is absolutely terrible. I feel so manipulated... Oh look Argos have a new catalogue out, I wonder if they have that new iPod with a built in camera!"
We are quite content to forget about all that worrying stuff for a packet of Malteasters and a new pair of jeans. It's ok, someone else will deal with all those important, moral dilemmas, Eastenders will be on in a bit, oh look Cheryl Cole's got a new bag, that's nice. In fact it I'm beginning to wonder if democracy is in fact out dated and what is actually needed is some new radical system to shake things up a bit. It is obvious that today's PMs and Presidents are selected on what is close to a Big Brother style personality contest. In the end it is the contestant with the nicest smile, comforting body language, and lowest CO2 footprint that'll win. The spin, the policies (because there are few discernible differences there) are of lesser importance. With most mainstream parties sat in the middle, and the only real alternatives being the BNP, it is no wonder that the whole thing finds resolve as a personality contest. In fact maybe more people would vote if politicians were put through a BB style campaign before election.  When I was in primary school we staged a pretend vote. We had party representatives talk to us about what they each stood for. The green party handed out cool flyers with a superhero and 3D text bludging from the paper into our retinas, screaming "SAVE THE WORLD WITH THE GREEN PARTY", who could resist that? But in the end, at the mock booths in the assembly hall, all it really came down to was your favorite colour. I picked yellow, but to this day I wish I would have picked green, those flyers were really something!