From the Times Literary Supplement: a review of Tom Bower's The Gambler
Boris Johnson: an amoral figure for a bleak, coarse culture
By Rory Stewart
... Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true.
I don't know, man, round for round, pound for pound, my money is on Mr. Bill Clinton. Slick Willy beats BoJo, perhaps not with a knockout, but after throwing sand into his eyes, or some other nasty underhanded way to victory.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 90's, that's when it was really going down. The technology transfers to China, the offshoring of American industrial capacity and jobs, the destruction of manufacturing-- we Americans were sitting there murmuring to ourselves, "we don't make anything here anymore...how can this be?" But not bothering to formulate a coherent question or demand a serious answer to a most serious question.
You can't list all the changes stealthily made by the man. I believe Clinton exceeds Reagan in lulling Americans to sleep walk through their public obligations and responsibilities. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, sold to the public as a way "to let anyone enter any communications business -- to let any communications business compete in any market against any other" lifted the final regulatory barriers in place preventing monopoly ownership of mass media. That's a pretty good lie, isn't it? To sell the public monopoly ownership of their mass media as if it was pro-competition and pro-diversity? I think so.
Yeah, OK. Sure the Brits have to concede to the Americans all things bullshit. Still, Bojo, is the best the Brits have got to an American-style political con man.
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