2 min read
ByJohn Nathan, John Nathan
The election result proves the theory of a very distinguished Jew
May 13, 2010 10:13On the same basis that it is far more acceptable to be disparaging towards Jews if the disparager is Jewish, as a member of the great British public I should be able to say without fear of causing offence (or being accused of bigotry) that it - the great British public (or GBP) - is a bunch of bone-headed ignoramuses.
So stupid is this massive but mentally challenged genus of the human species that BBC producers recently decided that the profession of one of their Master Chef contestants should be referred to on air as "child doctor", presumably to guard against nascent gourmets tracking down the paediatrician and filleting him alive for child abuse. Or maybe the producers thought Master Chef viewers simply too stupid to cope with big words.
Either way, the BBC's decision reveals nothing so much as the fact that its employees are themselves drawn from the GBP. On top of all this, a pre-election television vox pop interviewed voters who were not only undecided, but did not know which party was in power.
Last week, scientists published proof that most members of the British public have an IQ that is slightly less than that of parsley. And the idiocy of public opinion was later confirmed when government spies at GCHQ accidentally knocked out one of the aerials picking up communication signals from the Pakistani Taliban and instead found themselves listening to Vanessa Feltz's radio phone-in show.
Yet, amazingly, the election has turned all the evidence about the GBP on its head. Far from doing the stupid thing and heeding candidates' calls to vote them into power, the GBP has unwittingly taken to heart the wisdom of Western civilisation's greatest thinker, an Austrian Jew whose insights advanced our understanding of psychology and human nature. Yes, I am talking, of course, about… Hollywood director Billy Wilder.
The career that produced such wonderful films as The Apartment, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, taught Wilder an invaluable lesson about public opinion - that, while individually the public are what he, Paxman-like, called "imbeciles", collectively they are "critical geniuses".
And so it was proved with Britain's General Election. For, when the imbeciles voted on May 6, as we all know, they collectively produced a result so sophisticated and complex, it was almost impossible to know what they said.
Gordon Brown's short resignation speech on Monday was a polite form of Dick Tuck's concession speech after he lost California's state election in 1966: "The people have spoken," said Tuck, "the bastards."
This time, when the people spoke, what they said produced not only an earthquake but a staggeringly nuanced, subtle and wise dumbing-up of British politics. And their verdict has made the professional pundits look like a bunch of political simpletons.
The result punished Labour without rewarding the Tories; it made the Lib Dems power-brokers without endorsing them; it expressed deep concern about immigration yet booted out the BNP; it gave the Green party a say in Parliament without giving them the chance to ruin the economy.
The public don't always get it right - Hitler was voted into power and Jedward reached the X-Factor finals - but this time the GBP proved its utter genius.
John Nathan is the JC’s theatre critic