Boris Johnson

Two things. But before those, the hair.

It was thicker last time I noticed. 

But still cut as if he did it himself with scissors in his own bathroom. He grabbed clumps and snipped. He's wealthy, so this is how he wants to look. He wants his hair to be a mop on top of his head. This is his choice for himself. 

Sidepanel: 

[I was having lunch on the roof of a friends carport with a small group of other friends. Across the street a small red-haired woman entered her car and just sat inside it. I noticed she took out papers and read them. She had her checkbook. She balanced her checkbook. Her red hair was frizzled and ratted outward so that she looked like she stuck her finger into an electrical socket. 

Right then her two teenage boys ran up to the car from behind it, jumped onto the trunk then onto the roof and flew onto the hood then kept running ahead. Both of them did. Like this BANG BANG BANG, then BANG BANG BANG. Two animals leaping over the car.

I said, "The woman's hair is the perfect outward expression of her internal mental status. She is what she shows us." 

That put an end to the lunch. My friends cracked up so hard they couldn't continue. We were done. They knew the family. They knew the boys were driving her insane. They were nothing but trouble. And I mean nothing but trouble. She went out to her car for a moment of solitude and peace, and the boys would not leave her alone, and her hair expresses her near suicidal frustration.]

In the video below as Johnson is speaking he reaches into his hair and messes it up a few times as if scratching his head, but he's actually messing up his own hair. He draws attention to his hair, he draws energy from his hair. He uses hair-fiddling as physically expressed verbal pauses. He is not scratching his head. His hair is like Samson's hair was to him, Biblically speaking. 

Toby Young writes an awesome description of Boris Johnson for Quillette. Young met Johnson in school. He is thorough, the young Johnson to the present day Johnson, the virtuous Johnson with the profane Johnson, the statesman Johnson with the schmuck Johnson, the good, bad and ugly of Johnson. 

Young encountered Johnson at Oxford Union debating society. Johnson was disheveled, an oversized schoolboy with imposing physical stature, thick neck, broad forehead. Young imagined Johnson as Viking. 

Johnson spoke as if he were making a parody of theatrical, dramatic, self-serious British politics and the next moment seem to forget where he was. He asked the audience which side was he supposed to be on. Then proceeded before anyone could answer, in even more oratorical manner. Then within a few seconds suddenly realize the opposition has an equally compelling argument for the opposite views. So he flip-flopped for fifteen minutes giving the impression that he was some random person pulled from bed and dropped into debate room at Oxford Union without a good idea of what he was supposed to be talking about. 

Young knew how merciless the crowd was at Oxford Union toward those who came unprepared. But Johnson's chaotic approach had the opposite effect. The motion was deadly serious, "This House Would Reintroduce Capital Punishment" yet everything that Johnson said provoked laughter. Johnson was no ordinary undergraduate proposing a motion, rather, he was a Music Hall veteran performing a well-rehearsed comic routine. He came off as less the unprepared debater and more as someone sending up all the other speakers as well as the pomposity of the proceedings. Viewers sensed Johnson could have delivered a highly effective speech if he cared to but he was too clever and sophisticated and honest to enter into such absurd charade; to do what everyone else was doing. He was openly insincere and by being so, somehow he seemed more authentic than everyone else. 

The introduction continues with comparisons with Brideshead Revisited and Twelfth Night.

My uncle had described him as a “genius” and as a boy he’d been regarded as something of a wunderkind. There was the occasion when he was holidaying with his family in Greece, aged 10, and asked a group of Classics professors if he could join their game of Scrabble. They indulged the precocious, blond-haired moppet, only to be beaten by him. Thinking it was a one-off, they asked him to play another round and, again, he won. On and on it went, game after game. At the prep school he attended before going to Eton, Britain’s grandest private school, he was seen as a prodigy. A schoolmaster who taught him back then told his biographer, Andrew Gimson, that he was the quickest-learner he’d ever encountered. In the staff room, the teachers would compare notes about the “fantastically able boy.”

Young describes the present day situation in Britain and what political forces put Johnson in 10 Downing Street.

Three years ago, the British people voted to leave the European Union by 17.4 million votes to 16.1 million in what was the largest democratic contest of its kind in our island’s history.

That's still only 33.5 million votes. United Kingdom has population of 63,182,000.

The referendum result was contested. Many prominent people on the losing side felt that some of the statements made by leaders of the Leave campaign were dishonest, notably Boris Johnson, Britain's most prominent Brexiteer.

David Cameron who was Prime Minister during the referendum and having lead the Remain campaign, resigned on the morning the result was announced.

Quitter.

Everyone assumed Johnson would succeed Cameron but his campaign manager in the ensuing leadership contest decided he couldn't continue to support Johnson and threw his own hat into the ring. With these two victors of the Leave campaign in conflict it was Theresa May who campaigned for Remain who became the surprise winner.

So Johnson had to wait three years to claim the prize that many thought belonged to him all along.

Boris is often described as a “Marmite figure,” a reference to a salty, brown, waxy substance that some British people like to smear on their toast. You either love Marmite or you hate it and the same goes for Boris. Just as some sections of America’s coastal elites suffer from Trump derangement syndrome, large swathes of the UK’s intelligentsia are afflicted by Boris derangement syndrome.

This is apparent in the comments to this piece in Quillette. Opponents either disregard the entire article and state their own mean pinched opinion or they nitpick some line and distort it beyond recognition. They crawl out of the woodwork with the grossest mischaracterizations imaginable describing their political opponents with zero real comprehension. You just have to shake your head and think, I'm glad you dopes lost.

Young describes Boris Johnsons shortcomings and his bad behavior. He made up quotes while working for the Times of London and as Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. As editor of the Spectator at age 35 he combined his work there with a political career by becoming the Member of Parliament for Henley which Conrad Black described as trying to ride two horses at once.

Johnson is a gaff machine much like Joe Biden. When Johnson ran for mayor of London his Labor opponent dredged up everything offensive he had ever written, an embarrassment of riches. No need to hire researchers, it's all right there on the surface. For example:

No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.

In the same column:

It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.

Inflammatory stuff no matter the era. Johnson claimed to be satirizing neo-colonialism and not expressing neo-colonialist sentiments himself, and he got away with it. His watermelon smiles and piccaninnies didn't prevent him from winning the city that is non-white by 55%.

In another Telegraph column he compared Muslim women who wear niqabs to "letter boxes" and "bank robbers."

Duckduckgo images [niqab]

Because the line is so blurry between sincerity and insincerity and because Johnson is never fully earnest, he can wiggle out of taking responsibility for whatever it is that upsets people. Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole wrote about Johnson's sleight of hand in an unsympathetic profile for New York Review of books:

The anthropologist Kate Fox, in her classic study Watching the English, suggested that a crucial rule of the national discourse is what she called The Importance of Not Being Earnest: “At the most basic level, an underlying rule in all English conversation is the proscription of ‘earnestness.’” Johnson has played on this to perfection—he knows that millions of his compatriots would rather go along with his outrageous fabrications than be accused of the ultimate sin of taking things too seriously.

Then Young describes another similar reason why so many people are willing to forgive Johnson which burrows deeper into the divided English soul. Young cites George Orwell's the Art of Donald McGill, an essay about seaside postcards in which he describes a conflict at the heart of British national character, one they fought a civil war about, that captures Johnson's appeal.

On the one hand are pointy-heads, scolds, ever wagging thier fingers and pursing their lips always looking for moral failings. Orwell compares them to Don Quixote the high-minded hero of Cervantes' book and he contrasts them with Quixotes' comic foil, Sancho Panza, when listing the squire's down-to-earth qualities he could be describing Johnson as your unofficial self, the voice of the belly protesting the soul. His tastes are toward safety, soft beds, no work, pots of beer and women with voluptuous figures.

This saturnalian element in the British character is what Johnson appeals to and helps explain his popularity with ordinary voters. Orwell expands on this sanctimonious Europeanized intelligentsia in his work The Lion and the Unicorn. Orwell describes the common people as not puritanical, inveterate gamblers, beer drinkers devoted to bawdy jokes and users of foul language.

Another quote that Johnson's enemies drag up often to discredit him comes from a campaign speech in 2005, "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3." In their form of political battle it's appalling sexist and environmentally bad.

But if Orwell is right about the appeal of overwhelming vulgarity then the smuttiness and ever-present obscenity of Britain's seaside postcards you can see why reminding people of Johnson's politically incorrect comments won't hurt his electoral chances. Instead, it imbeded Johnson in the public imagination as stock British character whom they still feel instinctive affection for, the lovable rogue.

The most serious indictment of Johnson is the two years he spent as Foreign Secretary under Theresa May. It made him complicit in her failings. Although he did resign when the shape of her deal with the EU became clear. 

While his terms as Mayor of London was triumph. The murder rate was halved, traffic fatalities reduced, an ambitious house-building program was started, he introduced a popular bike renting scheme, and he presided over the successful 2012 London Olympics. 

The difference between his term as London mayor and as May's Foreign and Commonwealth Office is that he was conductor at City Hall and member of the orchestra in May's Cabinet. Johnson is alpha, he was never good at playing second. Young cites a childhood incident in which Boris at Six years of age couldn't handle his Five year old sister having all the attention at her own birthday party, so when she began speaking he shoved her aside and gave a speech of his own. 

Britain's political commentators are pessimistic about Johnson's premiership. His lack of parliamentary majority, the complexity of Brexit, trying to win over the flimsy center while flanked by Farage all add up to a bad reality that might make his term very short. 

Young insists that hearing all those sorry predictions of doom cause him to think of Winston Churchill. Back then everyone thought Britain was doomed. Most members of the Establishment thought Churchill was on a foolhardy course. What hope did Britain have against Nazi Germany? Yet Churchill overcame those doubts by bending reality. What is considered impossible today becomes possible tomorrow. Through force of personality Churchill changed the narrative and persuaded people that military defeat was not inevitable. By the same means attributed later to Steve Jobs; a reality distortion field. It's a power possessed by individuals that come along once in a generation who combine endless self-belief with exceptional cognitive ability and spellbinding charisma. 

Wow. 

I've yet to read anything so penetrating. 

Yet in comments the gnawing thrashing rats are right there ready with their preexisting conceits, chiseled in hieroglyphic high relief into their flat non-undulating fine grained limestone rat-brains.

Their remarks don't come anywhere near the article they're commenting on. They drag it down to their sewer. Word search [fear] for the full dose of their gross misapprehension. 

Seen on Instapundit. Boris Johnson explains how to speak like Winston Churchill.

There are similarities. As you know, Churchill's mother was American and his father was British aristocracy. Johnson was born to British parents in Manhattan's Upper East Side. His birth was registered with both the U.S. authorities and the city's British consulate thereby granting him both British and American citizenship. Educated at the European school Brussels I, Ashdown House, Eton College. He read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford and elected President of the Oxford Union.

"Do you remember his speeches? Do you know them by hot?"

E-e-e-e-w I hate that so much. I ... I .. I ... just can't even. 

Heart, you f'k'n dope. Is that so g.d. impossible? Why, yes, it is. Because the R's are put elsewhere places they don't belong. To sound like a cute little f'k'n British baby just learning to speak. Shut up. Just. Shut. Up!

He doesn't remember. To his shame. Just "snatches" of his speeches. Just the things that all of us remember. The ones that stick out ... It's the gift he had for compression. Then he goes on to recite portions of Churchill speeches that few could recall when put on the spot. How adorable. 

"Not just long orotund bombastic Churchillian circumlocutions ...

* Snicker * 

"But then suddenly *gesticulation* condensing it. *pointing with two hands* And focusing and using short Anglo-Saxon zingers.

* Snicker * 

"So much, so many, so few." 

"Once you've heard that, 'Neverinthefieldofhumanconflictwassomuchowedbysomanytosofew'"

* Snicker * 

"It is almost impossible to forget." 

"What that is in proper rhetoric is a descending tricolon." 

* Snicker *  His interviewer finds him irresistibly amusing. 

While he was speaking and citing Churchill I was thinking, oh, there's that conduplicatio again, anaphora, the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive clauses. 

A few years ago Insty kept mentioning the book Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric, over and over, so I bough it and read it. Thin book. Easy read. Candy. Cases with several examples each. But I hadn't realized until then that rhetoric is basically specific types of repetition, the beginning and ending and center of clauses, mixed up, switched around, relieved with variations. There's a word for every little thing. And as this video shows, they're all perfectly useless in ordinary conversation because they self-alienate immediately. The woman laughs. Because citing in rhetorical terms the specific type of repetition that Churchill is using is ridiculous. 

Yet you hear it all the time.

"Use blue soap on your bathroom mirrors.

Use blue soap on your countertops.

Use blue soap on your appliances.

Use blue soap on your windows.

Use blue soap on your automobile windshield

Use blue soap on your automobile tires. 

Use blue soap in your hair, on your teeth, between your toes." 

"Shut up already! Knock it off with with anaphora conduplicatio.