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Death, like tax, is something we would all like to avoid for as long as possible and ideally forever. But there is an argument for suggesting in some cases it can save you from things you never wanted to see or hoped would never happen. For instance, Winston Churchill’s “Order Of The Boot” from the not so grateful British people in 1945 may have been avoided by a timely heart attack just after VE Day.
In contrast, lucky old JFK was hit by Lee Harvey Oswald’s magic cluster of bullets before he might have been turned into a Bill Clinton by sex scandals – and then an LBJ/Nixon, via the Vietnam War. Perhaps for most of us being hit by a bus just before 9/11 would have meant we genuinely shuffled off this mortal coil in accordance with Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong.
All of this is leading up to Clint Eastwood and his chair chat at the Republican Convention, an event his fans will have wished that either he or they (preferably him, as he is 82) never lived to see. It could of course be said that after a 50 year plus bull run of Cool, which has gone from Rawhide to Gran Torino the actor was chronically overbought. Even Apple’s (AAPL) bull run is less than 10 years old. But could this legend ever be tarnished enough to render the name checks in the Back to the Future Trilogy comical? We can only wait to see how the dust settles on the Eastwooding viral.
Top Gear Presenter Jeremy Clarkson is one of the reasons that The Banned Blogger is anonymous, as this avoids the temptation he has succumbed to of ego getting in the way of the argument. This blogger is also not big on booze, football and birds laddism from mid life crisis public schoolboys either.
Instead, the motivation here is to widen the subject matter and in style deliver a nod of appreciation to the best anonymous blog, the Lex Column in the Financial Times. Lex is normally understated and detached, so that agree or disagree it can crystalise your own views on the financial markets, a company, or the state of the business world. But getting back to Clarkson – his habit of running down foreigners, “lesser” members of our society and gratuitous political incorrectness, means that over the years there has been hardly a section of society or even the world that has been given a verbal stabbing. In fact, it is the shock factor which is key here.
For example the suggestions earlier this year that strikers should be shot/Border Control should be (more) racist. This is attention seeking at its worst, throwing back the power of celebrity in our collective faces. The sham tactic is not that Clarkson is shocking with something new and imaginative – even Damien Hirst’s sliced animals just about made the grade all those years ago – but shock for its own sake. This week it would appear that courtesy of Clarkson’s recently deceased dog, the tables have been turned and all of a sudden things are not so tongue in cheek. The motoring hero has been forced to lash out against all 62 million of us British (the nation that invented the concentration camp) – effectively turning the gun on himself after running out of weak targets to shoot. May the dog rest in peace.
Going into the likely reshuffle this week we have been treated to the somewhat pathetic spectacle of the Conservative Party Chairman, Ministerial Code breaker and rent free tenant Baroness Warsi begging to keep her job. It might have been the case that the title Baroness was bestowed upon our Sayeeda 5 years ago as she is from up north, a woman, and tends to rub people up the wrong way, just like Mrs Thatcher.
Unfortunately, so far Warsi has not been Prime Minister for 11 years, or made transformational changes in the UK. But in fact, it would appear that the boring reality of her political career is that she could never win a constituency for the Conservative Party, even though she argues it really needed her demographic. It does not, not even the Natural Law Party does. But the ploy of a public cry for help is a canny one in the sense that she is playing on the idea that sacking her would admit to this example of tokenism (woman, Asian, no talent) having gone painfully wrong. Indeed, it would normally be a winning strategy apart from the way that Vince “Business Hater” Cable, George “No Plan” Osborne, Nick “Wealth Tax” Clegg have all blown up in their own special way. Dave Cameron has the choice of sticking with the same tried and failed crew, or devaluing the honours system even further with more House of Lords fodder.
