No talent for metaphor

[sheenaghpugh]

I've never gone along with the notion that poets would make good legislators - most of them are far too flaky and inefficient. But I do think they would make good spin doctors, because we know a strong image when we see one.

Certainly most poets could have told the gents porking at the G8 summit that troughing one's way through 19 courses was not the image to project while discussing food shortages, and that giving journalists the chance to make comments like "After discussing famine in Africa, the peckish politicians and spouses took on four bite-sized amuse-bouche to tickle their palates. The price of staple foods may be soaring, but thankfully caviar and sea urchin are within the purchasing power of leaders and their taxpayers" and "Leaders cleverly skated around global water shortages by choosing from five different wines and liqueurs" was a thing to be avoided if at all possible. Any writer I know would have twigged the value of being seen eating a meal of positively Gandhian spareness, and making sure the media got the message.

Mind you, you'd think politicians would have the nous to see it too, but apparently not....

Comments

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

you'd think politicians would have the nous to see it too... but few of them can see that far past their own self-worth. A few, yes, but all too few.

If they even notice, they'll have lots of easy, wordy reasons why it was right and proper of them...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

My guess is a significant number will have been embarrassed. Whether that will be enough for them to insist on tacking an extra item on the agenda to the effect that "Yes, we know [next host country] has the most superb cooks who want to impress us, but couldn't we have something a bit less likely to hit the headlines?" is another matter.

[sheenaghpugh]

I suspect they were embarrassed too, but I'm surprised they didn't get together and try to Do Something About It earlier. Realistically, they or their entourages must have had some idea of the menu, because someone will have checked for allergies, particularly with so much seafood about.

But this is where the sensitivity to setting and metaphor comes in - or lack of it, in that nobody thought in advance of what a brilliant set-piece scene this was going to be and how it could be turned into a telling image. The writers I know are useless at most practical stuff, but they'd have sorted that. I think prime ministers and the like should each have a pet poet, a court bard to take around with them as the Norse kings did. Those poets were specifically there to watch what the king did and take notes, so that later his saga would be a worthy one - at the battle of Stiklestad, King Olaf the Saint ordered his poets to go into battle as his personal guard so that they'd have a ringside seat as it were (not the best plan, cos they all got killed and the one who'd prudently gone off on crusade had to write it all from hearsay when he got back). Not that I'm volunteering for any battles, but a personal bard would do more for your average politico's image than a horde of Campbells.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember a praise-singer at Mandela's inauguration?

But I'm afraid the press would just say that a personal bard was proof of the politico's gross vanity and a waste of tax-payers' money.

[sheenaghpugh]

Oh, I think he should pay a bard out of his own money; be a proper patron... Yes, I think you're right about Mandela; maybe that tradition is still recalled in African culture. Sad that the best the West could do in that line was JFK's tart crooning Happy Birthday to him...