As media, especially television, has dispersed into fragments, giving a thousand choices, we may crave, with the nostalgia of the recently bereaved, those occasional get-togethers where we would congregate around the kitchen table and muse about last night’s news bulletin, or the guests on Michael Parkinson’s chat show.
Welcome to the X Factor election. To a world where party election broadcasts have lost all relevance (do you know anyone who watched even one?); where the big staged interviews with Robin Day, Alastair Burnett, or even Paxman, are relics.
Now, we are treated to the verdict of leading judge Simon Cowell, as, thanks to The Sun, he is given space to air his expert views on the final three contenders.
Political decision making, at its raw core – the scratch of an ‘X’ on a ballot paper – has been swept along on the tide of the ‘Quiet Social Revolution’ (QSR), and as a nation, we have changed forever.
In our QSR, the global digital universe finds an unspoken plurality and thumbs the remote to select Cowell’s or Lloyd-Webber’s latest starlet, or, as we have just discovered in the last few weeks, the new government of the United Kingdom. It’s the water cooler moment.
But the QSR has meant that we don’t have to restrict the besprinkling of our thoughts to those around the (now virtual) kitchen table or taking up all the space on the notional sofa.
The water cooler of 2010 is the back channel of Twitter. Swoop on the hashtag and make your comment with a sentence and a half of withering wit, or a succession of OMGs and LOLs, according to taste (or your sharpness of mind and reaction).
Where, once, we would have reacted, shared views, and argued, the next morning, now the news, incident, or ‘TV moment’ feels stale by the following day (this is why daily paper-based versions of news are finished).
We have devoured last night’s prey; let’s move on, for today’s watering hole has some chewy-looking hyenas.
As night turns to day, the world of comment and one-liners has already moved on to the next trending topic in our quiet social revolution.
Just as reality TV characters are only hot as they warm the (very) temporary seat of fleeting recognition (anybody squealing at Lloyd Daniels or Rachel Adedeji today?), the leaders of the three main political parties found they were judged on similar (x) factors. The three televised debates had far more in common with reality TV than Westminster. The debates redefined simplicity for the mass market. ITV’s bizarre but hypnotising digital ‘worm’ (gauging popularity in real time) moved up when one of the blessed trinity spoke, and down again when they stopped talking. Political commitment that wears off before the commercial break.
Politics, and the way we interact with politicians (just as popular music and print media have discovered a little late) has changed forever. The procedures of the last six weeks have nailed down the coffin lid on battle buses, leafleting, party election broadcasts, and impassioned speeches on the hustings, with no prospect of a vampiric emergence from the casket.
From this day onwards, the politician with a winning mentality will need a busy Twitter account, a pretty face and/or a compelling back story of obstacles overcome and demons conquered. He, or she, will probably find it increasingly essential to holiday at Sandy Lane, with Simon Cowell.
Britain’s got talent. Place your ‘X’ with care.
Terence Dackombe May 2010
