Glob-a-log

I do think that the most positive you can say about 99.9% of all politicians is that they are, collectively and individually, a necessary evil. It’s not often though that those within the system admit that within their own party they don’t have anything better on offer for a leader of the party than a sexist chair sniffer with a history of bra pulling.

One has to admire the honesty of Western Australia’s Liberal Party, even if you wouldn’t want to be a member, a chairman - or a chair - in it:

One of Australia’s most senior conservative politicians broke down today as he tearfully admitted sniffing the chair of a female colleague shortly after she vacated it. Troy Buswell, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party in Western Australia, was under intense pressure to resign over the incident, which happened in 2005.

He dismissed allegations on 13 different occasions that he had sniffed the seat, before finally admitting yesterday that it had in fact taken place. The emergence of the chair-sniffing incident had placed a strain on his marriage, he conceded.

Mr Buswell’s deputy, Kim Hames, stood by him, describing him as a rough diamond with a robust sense of humour. “To me, Troy’s a rough diamond and you don’t fix a rough diamond by smashing it to pieces,” said Dr Hames. “You take those rough edges off and you’ve got something that is of quality, and I think Troy is a quality person, and when you get to know him and know what he’s like, these incidents aren’t what he’s like.”

Other members of the Liberal party said privately they were disgusted by the whole episode, but would not challenge Mr Buswell as leader of the Liberals because there was no better candidate.

It’s a very common defence, whenever someone is caught at something bad: that ‘these incidents aren’t what he’s like.’

It is also very wrong: those incidents are exactly what someone is like. Most of us are wearing public masks. That’s part of human nature and in a way it is a necessary part of civilisation: to hide and/or tame private instincts which would otherwise negatively influence public life.

Also, one should not be judged for any of these private thoughts and desires, as long as they don’t spill over into public life. I.e. as long as one can keep that mask in place one should be judged by this public behaviour and not by whatever might be hidden beneath - if it stays there.

However, whenever those masks slip, things of a true and possibly very troubling nature may be revealed. So, these ‘incidents’ are not somehow aberrations which are not a part of the person, they are, in fact, very revealing of the true nature of that person. These incidents are what you get when the public mask can no longer hide the person inside.

In this sense these slips are very serious - even if the (chair sniffing) incident itself may seem more ludicrous and pathetic than anything else. A lot of slippage can also mean that the public mask may be disintegrating - and that could be highly dangerous. The human animal without a mask, one that can’t control these private urges, can become a serious danger to his or her environment, his or her fellow humans and him or herself.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 16:46 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.