Our political leaders make every effort to appear as inoffensive as possible, in part due to the inordinate power of elderly voters. Their scandals, perhaps because of the wholesome front they put up, tend to be of the sexual variety. (And, of considerable sexual variety.)
Britain, on the other hand, can have politicians who are clearly unpleasant people. I present Prime Minister Gordon Brown: in addition to his reported violent tantrums and surly demeanor, he has a propensity to insult voters. (That particular voter describes herself as a "lifelong Labour voter" and had previously thought of Brown as "very nice"!)
I don't know about you, but the Tories are looking pret-ty good right now, not only compared to Labour, but especially compared with their insane Republican counterparts in this country.
I just watched a short video about this. Apparently, Brown called her a "bigotted woman" only after he got in the car. The best part, though, is that the sound bite beat the Prime Minister to his next radio interview. When the interviewer dropped the clip on him, Brown just dropped his head into his hands. There's an internal monologue I wouldn't mind having been a party to.
ReplyDeleteBut as a point of criticism, was Brown really wrong? If you listen to that woman talk, she's afraid that her dead husband's pension will be taxed; that too many European-Mexicans (a la Chex, I'd imagine) are running rampant in Britain; that it won't be cheap enough for her grandchildren to attend college; all of this in the midst of an economic catastrophe, and on top which, she won't listen to any of his responses. In other words, she sounds like the worst of all possible Americans: an octogenarian voter crossed with a gun-toting teabagger. If she could lose the accent, you might confuse her with your average Mississippian.
Mississippian.