Come in Spinner

The frankly indescribable floods in Queensland, while far too serious a subject to be discussed in this 'forum', have presented a rather surprising turn of events: praise, and yes even fondness for Anna Bligh. It is of course, thoroughly deserved. Bligh has provided exactly what was needed in the face of impending and ongoing disaster: honesty, heart and information. What is surprising about it is that if Queenslanders were asked to list Anna Bligh's attributes a month ago, the exact opposites of those three words would have been used. Anna Bligh was gone, she was seen as disingenuous and incompetent, and people were pumped to vote her out. They were looking forward to it.

So what was different about the way Bligh presented herself over the last few weeks? Number 1: She was not thinking about how she was presenting herself. Number 2: The media were not thinking about how she was presenting herself and Number 3: No one in Queensland was concerned at all with anything to do with that sort of bullshit. What we witnessed was Government working without spin, the media reporting without spin and everyone being better off for its absence.

We must realise however, that there is a reason for that: The situation dictated it. Anna Bligh and the media did not just learn simultaneously that this is what people like. It is because that for once there is enough 'news' occurring to satisfy the 24 hour cycle, and that has simply removed the more speculative news journalism. Just like that, away goes the spin and the pseudo-psychological over-analysis of your local journalistic crumb-bum.

It's a common misconception that it is solely politicians and the corporate sector who deal in spin, but in fact it is the media itself who is the true master of the dark arts. Spin was invented by the media, and it has since leaked into every orifice of public and private bodies. Long gone are the days when an event happens and somebody reports on it. There are many 'phases' now to major news stories that tend to blow things out. They are: the 'pre-event speculation' phase, the 'event is about to start, I wonder if the speculation was right' phase, the 'event has started' phase, the 'event is continuing' padding, the 'approaching the middle of the event' further padding, the 'middle of the event' rest and recap, post-middle discussion, continuing post-middle, nearing climax, climax, post climax, repeat of what happened at climax in case you just joined us or were in a coma, nearing end, end, analysis, end of year montage preparation. These 16 phases must be filled with a narrative of some sort or the audience will get bored and turn over to Two and a Half Men or My Kitchen is Pretty Good to blast away their feelings of inadequacy with food, tears and quasi-humorous misogyny. If there's no actual narrative, you spin one. It's that easy!

Anyway, the point is (I think): if we like our politicians to be straight-forward, honest and to tell it like it is, if we like them to be rough around the edges and free of those greasy PR types, if we want them to speak like real people, then why aren't they like that all the time?

Why?

Because if they were, the news cycle would destroy them. The media would be more likely to punish them for it than praise them, and so would we. If it wasn't during an event of the magnitude of these floods, where people feel uncomfortable talking about something so debauched as politics, then we would punish MPs for exhibiting these qualities.

Making flippant remarks, being glib, wrong tie, looked funny, looked bored, was laughing, wasn't laughing, looked asleep, bad hair, no hair, fat, not fat enough, ate a burger, ate the wrong burger, mixed up the red heads, stumbled on a community leader's name, actually stumbled over a community leader, stepped in dog shit, drank a foreign beer, looked awkward hugging someone, hugged someone they weren't meant to, kicked a football badly, hit a kid in the nuts playing cricket, has an ugly family, has a hot family, has a second family, has one of those rat dogs, plays badminton, referenced a slightly daggy musical act, eats cheese…in bed, is one of those people who thinks the phrase 'rocket surgery' is still funny, drinks, doesn't drink, in middling on drinking etc. These are all the things that get jumped on when there is not enough real stuff going on to feed the media beast.

If you want to know why your representatives look like robots, and say the same keywords five times over every time someone shoves a camera in their gob, then there's your answer. The only thing that fights spin is more spin, with some repetition to boot. The less you say, the less interpretation there is, and the less bullshit you read about yourself tomorrow morning.

You have to go robot, just don't go full robot.