Monday, November 10, 2008

Political Pygmies

Watching British political figures desperately claim a connection, however tenuous or fictitious, in the last few days to Obama's win has been a spectacle of almost Lilliputian absurdity. What should alarm most MPs in Westminster is the sudden realisation among their constituents that they are represented by a class of people whose mediocrity is laid bare by last week's events. (The great Gill Scott-Heron was wrong: the revolution HAS been televised.)
In Saturday's Guardian, Marina Hyde dissected the changed mood (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/08/barack-obama-usa ):
"As they watched Barack Obama's inspiring acceptance speech this week, one wonders how many politicians, and even ex-politicians, experienced a similarly sobering, gut-sinking sense if not of their own inadequacy in the face of the gold standard, then at least in the manner in which the public discourse has been allowed to bump along at the level of the banal and unedifying for what suddenly seems so long."
Gordon, Dave, Nick, give it up, will you?

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