Our politicians have become so dull that sheep now count them when they can't sleep. John Lapsley reckons our politicians need a training programme in the art of the insult.
There is a threat more dire than the world financial crisis.
Unless something conjures a bunny from a hat, you and I are to be bored to our deaths between October 24 and November 26. The day after the World Cup final, we'll be hooked on to the General Election machine. The tedium drip will be turned on, and for the next 34 days they'll put all us poor puppies to sleep.
Our politicians have become so dull that sheep now count them when they can't sleep. "That's John, there's Phil, now Don," the sheep quietly mumble to their mothers. "Jump Rodney, jump. Oh dear ... It's unlikely we'll see a battle of the wits because neither side seems armed."
The last quarter-decent political insult we heard was from Labour MP Damien O'Connor, who opined his party machine was run by a "gaggle of gays". His leader, Phil Goff, immediately waved the "inappropriate" card at him.
"Inappropriate" is the lame-duck term the politically correct use to fingerwag at anything that suggests drunkenness, sex, idiocy, or worst, honesty. (Admittedly O'Connor had kicked a spiffing own goal.)
Times have moved. A century ago, the British prime minister David Lloyd George got belly laughs when he said of an egregious opponent, "When they circumcised Herbert Samuel they threw away the wrong bit." How many "inappropriate" boxes would that tick today? Lloyd George surely believed a chamber lacking decent insults was unparliamentary.
If our Ministry of Culture had good taste, it would put together insult training days for politicians before the campaign begins in earnest. They're needed because the insults hurled today simply don't cut it. Calling someone a Nazi or a Stalin is not quality insulting. Trevor Mallard calling Tau Henare a "chocolate-coloured banana" defines third-rate.
The workshops would fit politicians with insult trainer wheels, and send them out wobbling to entertain us. The basics are as follows.
The insult shouldn't be shouted; it is more cutting when quietly observed. Racism and obscenities don't score. The best insults are subtler barbs where the pain spreads as the victim takes several moments to absorb the extent of the humiliation.
The insult should make its receiver feel smaller, and its deliverer larger. It needs to make others leer or snigger, and is preferably printable. Most of all, a classy insult is grounded on some uncomfortable truth about the victim. And unfortunately, each of us owns a special trait that opens the gate for someone else's perfect insult.
If we understand this, we can seek the protection of insulting ourselves. David Lange, by some breadth our fattest prime minister, scored high points when he admitted his problem with the Labour Party was it hated his guts.
Clyde Holding, an Australian leftie who died recently, told a story about a junior constable besting him when he was a pompous young protester. "Name and occupation please? " the young cop asked, after arresting him at a demonstration.
"Holding - and I'm a lawyer and a politician, actually," condescended Clyde. The constable licked his pencil, and thought about his next question.
"Can you read and write?"
Not bad. Perhaps the constable was a Kiwi. Most of our insults about Australians pick on either their intelligence or taste; at heart we still believe they're stained convicts. Robert Muldoon pinged this with that most famous insult by a New Zealand politician: "New Zealanders who emigrate to Australia raise the IQs of both countries."
When the death of the colourless American president Calvin Coolidge was announced, Dorothy Parker asked: "How could they tell?" I doubt Robert Muldoon went so quietly into the night.
The difficulty for a politician rehearsing insults is the party machine would demand they first be tested in focus groups. In these places, small assemblies of nice people unwittingly conspire to remove the harm of originality. They replace it with odourless holes in the air.
Imagine if Winston Churchill had been forced to workshop his retort to the Liverpool MP Bessie Braddock, who'd unsportingly accused him of being drunk. "You, Bessie, are ugly. I, however, shall be sober in the morning." Today he'd be made to stand shamefaced in the "inappropriate" corner.
Churchill's detractors claimed he spent days rehearsing his impromptu one-liners. But the Braddock insult was clearly off the cuff. And consider the moment when Churchill, ensconced in the loo, was disturbed by an aide saying a privy councillor wished to meet immediately.
"Tell the privy councillor I'm in the privy and can only deal with one shit at a time," bellowed Churchill. The fellow was quick on his feet, even sitting.
There have been politicians so true to the insult, they'd administer it to the dying. Marcus Junius Brutus, a friend of Julius Caesar, was part of the cluster of Roman politicians who stabbed him to death in 44BC.
William Shakespeare's account recorded only the penultimate line of the drama. Really, the scene went like this: Caesar: Et tu, Brute?
Brutus: But that's what your sister said.
OK, that's invented. But it's in the right spirit, inappropriate, and checks many of the boxes. Teach them.
• John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
