Boris Johnson isn’t London’s New Bicycle

MittRomney.jpg “Have you seen this guy Mitt Romney,” David Letterman would joke when the gorgeous ex-Gov was still in the race. “He looks like an American president in a Canadian movie.” (”He looks like a lawyer who advertises on the back of the bus” and “He looks like the guy who’s still doing the lambada,” were some other good zings.)

Only in politics (or a used car lot) might someone like Romney or John Edwards be taken seriously, let alone venerated. What’s remarkable about the two remaining democratic candidates is neither are, like most of our politicians, caricature exaggerations of American naivete. While one candidate seems more “authentic” than the other, there’s no doubt that both pass the Turning test.

If it is hard to picture Hillary Clinton as the fearless young woman she once was, it’s near impossible to conceive of Bill in his twenties. Did he restrain his Machiavellian Southern Simpleton persona at Oxford and Yale? Does his accent recede at home when he’s frustrated or distracted — like Madonna’s?

Schwarzenegger.jpgAmerica being the great “melting pot”, we even elect parodies of other national stereotypes. And the California governor is not the first actor to enter politics. The phrase “Hollywood for ugly people” could very well be “Broadway for the tone-deaf,” no sufferer of stage fright has ever run for office.

I wonder if theatrical nationalism is true of candidates abroad. Had Steve Irwin lived longer, might he one day have been elected Prime Minister of Oz? Does the duma have a vodka happy hour? Might this explain Nicolas Sarkozys romantic life?

Knowing little about foreign politics or more importantly, the subtle nuances that would contribute to the foreign equivalency of Mitt Romney’s strangeness, I can’t say for certain that this happens from Sweden to Thailand to Panama. But anyone who’s watched just five minutes of the House of Commons Prime Minister’s Questions on television, knows the UK is home to some the world’s finest political theater performers. Even Saturday Night Live doesn’t much parody their meetings as play it straight on.

London’s freshly elected mayor Boris Johnson is one of the finest of these actors. Nearly every mention of his name is followed with the word “bumbling.” Where else does the mayor overshadow the prime minister?

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His comments in the press seem straight out of Are You Being Served?

Buying a meat pie, he was asked whether he wanted it wrapped in a bag. “Yes, some kind of bag!” he responded, before remembering the party line, that plastic bags are bad for the environment. “No, we’re antibag,” he said. “We’re going to hold it.”

He glanced at his entourage, already laden with various Boris-accrued items, and edited himself again. “We’re going to find a team of porters to hold it.”

The website Boris Johnson Facts (via) explains “Every time you say you don’t believe in fairies, Boris Johnson kills a little bit of Kylie Minogue,” “Boris Johnson invented the theory of intelligent design for a laugh,” and “Network Rail is actually run by the 10% spare capacity in Boris Johnson’s brain.” There’s also the Boris Johnson Generator. It is “just like Boris’ own speeches, a pastiche of humorous nonsense that occasionally reveals a pearl of wisdom or vicious prejudice.” (Sample outcome: “My transport policy is deeply unattractive psyche. I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis. being reincarnated as an olive.”)

When someone from pop culture says they stand in allegience with George W. Bush, it is either taken as a meta-joke (Vincent Gallo) or proof of idiocy (Heidi Montag.) But while the Tories aren’t Evangelical or even pro-Iraq war (Johnson’s called Bush “cross-eyed texan warmonger,”) they are jingos, and Johnson’s nationalism has come across as racist.

From Infinite Thought, “Reared on warmed-over irony, children’s cartoons, cynicism and celebrity medja, those puffed up bastards who work in the city and offices all over London are exactly the kind of person who’d think: ‘wouldn’t it be hilarious if Boris Johnson was mayor, huh huh huh’.”

The last zany British politician to come to our attention, Tony Blair, arrived on the scene with splashes of the Union Jack on everything and the Blur and Oasis bickering. Self-mocking or not, it all seemed cool to most American hipsters. Comparisons to Barack Obama are wrong, Blair was more like Al Gore — never quite in on the joke. Anyway, his popularity plummeted even before the Iraq war and those Britpop stars were mostly one-hit wonders.

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Johnson’s election comes as London is losing its cultural influence. All we really hear from the city now are Keira Knightley sightings and Banksy taggings. English friends of mine complain that clubs they’ve gone to since they were teenagers, are all of a sudden sending them away at the door for wearing sneakers and jeans. And beloved neighborhoods now accompany the (mostly international) newly wealthy. It’s no wonder so many have moved abroad.

Several years ago, Brooklyn unseated London as the cool mecca, and now the telecommuting creative class favors bicycle-friendly, medium-sized, (cheaper!) cities like Berlin, Melbourne, Portland, Austin, Buenos Aires, Montreal, etc. All that being said I’d move there in a heartbeat for a job (and, out of necessity, about twice the salary I demand here.)

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Posted by Joanne on May 6, 2008 | Link

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