Well it looks like the image building phase of the Gordonian Era is up and running. Gordon Brown exalts courage above all virtues. Gordon Brown heralds the new seriousness. Welcome to the age of Gordon, where all our oats are well salted. It’s rrrrrectitude all the way, complete with rrrrrs rrrrrolled between the milk-white thighs of Presbyterian virgins. Toss me a caber, I’ll be back for breakfast.
Old Joe Kennedy said something to the effect that writing a proper book did you a lot of good with classy people, and then went on to have James Reston (or Schlesinger: I forget) write JFK’s Profiles in Courage, something which doesn’t appear to have gone unnoticed by the Chancellor and his advisers.
Today the Guardian treated us to one of Gordon’s profiles in courage, who turns out to be Aung San Suu Kyi. It was an interesting choice: Suu Kyi is what people aspiring to gravitas have for a celebrity. Her advantage is that she’s stuck in a house surrounded by tatmadaw. There’s no chance she’s going to preside over an embarrassingly violent overthrow of the government, run amok and declare a people’s democracy, or start skimming thirty per cent off the top of proposed foreign investments. She’s never going to let you down. Hell, she can’t get out of her damn house. And since this isn’t China or Saudi Arabia there’s nothing at stake in eulogising her and excoriating the government.
Rumblings aside, it looks like Gordon’s a shoo in for Prrrrrime Minister. I wonder if the next couple of years will see any serious attempt to improve Suu Kyi’s material or political position? Or will he just admire her from afar as though she were Kylie or someone?

Toss yer own caber, sonny.
Posted by: dearieme | April 17, 2007 at 06:12 PM