Woman in ‘is pregnant’ shocker
Let's get the unpleasantness out of the way first. Once you see this, there's no way of unseeing it, I'm afraid:
You can blame Army of Dave for that, and there's no way it's going to leave your brain now. No. There's Data / Cameron / Michael Schumacher bearing down on you, heaving and sweating away without a single hair out of place, inseminating you with his Tory seed. That thought's in your mind, and you can't get rid of it. And for that I'm very sorry*.
In a way, the flurry of excitement that will attach itself to this "SamCam is up the duff innit?!" story, like so many beetles boring into the gently decaying corpse of a recently run-over badger, is a symptom of what we and our media have become. Mrs Cameron herself was the subject even today of a photoshoot which was described on one website I saw, without an atom of tongue-in-cheekiness, as 'saucy'. Yes, like a 1970s postcard or Barbara Windsor rebuffing Sid James's amorously squawky Cockney overtures. Elsewhere most of Fleet St's finest went for the slightly less Wimpy-Burger-before-watching-Game-for-a-Laugh description of 'racy', which isn't much better.
Saucy. Saucy. Bleurgh. Where do we go from there? Saucy and racy pictures of politicians' wives? How did we get there, come to think of it? What made us focus on these things? Is it just an extension of news about dicks - the idea that because DaveCam has put his thingy into SamCam and it all worked and everything, that he's somehow more virile, and more interesting, because his dick works properly and all of that? Is it something to do with our obsession with celebrities' significant others - from footballers' wives and WAGs to politicians' wives and wags? (And yes, I'm afraid the significant other in question is usually female.) Or is it just something to do with the pointless flim-flammery and banality that passes for news nowadays?
The whole business of dragging up poltiticians' partners is fairly pointless anyway, as Justin pointed out a while ago:
The media of course lap all this up like dogs going at a pavement pizza. Two women who appear to be reasonably intelligent and successful women in their own rights are reduced to clothes horses entered into a semi-naughty catfight. When the inevitable backlash kicks off after the election and one of these women’s life is made a misery by press intrusion and vilification their husbands won’t have a leg to stand on, them having signed of on the strategy in the first place.
Still, all this gives the rest of us a pointer towards what we should do when we’re facing life’s little challenges. Things not going well at work? When called into the bosses office all you need say is, ‘Yes, what I’m doing is shit and you don’t like me but have you heard what my Mrs has to say about me? I think you may very well change your mind.’
Who gives a shit what SamCam wears, or how Sarah Brown is Labour's 'secret weapon'? Did anyone ever really actually vote on the basis of Norma Major or Denis Thatcher? Really? Do we really give a shit? Sometimes you look back at confirmed bachelor Ted Heath, and his lack of a significant other, and how he still managed to lead the country; and you wonder if maybe we've actually gone backwards rather than forwards. Would a single man - let alone a single woman - be allowed to lead a party in this country, or become Prime Minister? Wouldn't they just end up being crucified by the press? Or by us? Is it us who wouldn't stand it? Is it us who are driving the prim pearl-clutching of our favourite newspapers, or is it they who are driving us?
I don't know, but it's all faintly wearying. Politics has become so personalised now, more than ever before. It wasn't as if Cherie Blair didn't gleefully give us almost all the details about fucking Tony and getting pregnant in order to flog a few books, or that Tony boasted about his 'three times a night'' antics in the Sun as the last election drifted into view. Never mind that war, and all the death and suffering! He's fucked a woman, you know! - "Oh, has he really? Well I really must change my mind about his policies altogether!"
It's tempting to think that anyone who says "Has this won the Tories the election?" should be killed, or at the very least left in the gutter in excruciating pain. But maybe they're right, and what if they are? Maybe no-one does give a shit about whether ex-ministers claimed they could get you a word in with someone important for a few sovs. Maybe no-one cares about how school or hospital or whatever is going to be affected by the election. Maybe we don't care at all. Maybe we just want politics to be like football, with WAGs to make us coo and boo, and 'racy' pictures, and gossiping like twats about babies because we're not bloody grown-up enough to give a shit about how this whole democratic business might make things better or worse. What if the media don't dictate - what if they just reflect? What a sorry, sorry nation we are if they do.
* I'm not.
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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March 22nd, 2010 - 18:22
I’ve no idea where this has come from, but it seems to affect the politics of general office life too. In my previous office, all the managers were married with 2.4 children. Anyone who didn’t fit into that demographic wouldn’t stand a chance at getting a managerial position, even more so if they were female. Ability didn’t enter into it.
March 23rd, 2010 - 13:12
one of my favourite gloria steinem anecdotes was her being asked by a journalist about her time at smith college. the journalist asked her what she thought about ‘the top woman in the country having gone to smith’ – she was referring to the first lady who i think was nancy reagan at the time. steinem replied ‘do you think there’s a journalist in the UK asking Denis Thatcher’s school friends what it was like to know the top man in the country?’
And of course, there wasn’t. because men aren’t ‘wives’. this whole obsession with the political wife is intensely frustrating, when on earth did we go back to defining women by who they are married to.
March 25th, 2010 - 08:11
All the main political parties are exactly the same, so it comes down to personality. There’s no other way of choosing between right-wing nutter Tories and right-wing nutter NuLab, except for the fact that Cameron is photogenic and Brown should be sectioned.
March 25th, 2010 - 11:56
@sianushka – depressingly, I don’t think we ever stopped defining women by who they’re married to. (Great Steinem story, btw).
This non-story is an noxious mix of new-style personality politics and old-style sexism. Policies are frequently boring and tricky to understand, so often people prefer to get an insight into the personality of the man (and it usually is a man) who’ll be the leader, and let that guide their decision. In some ways, this makes sense – after all, you can’t write a manifesto that covers every eventuality and the top guy does have to make decisions that’ll be guided by his character and judgement.
But obviously, if he can make babies or not shouldn’t really factor into it. Whether his wife is pretty or fashionable shouldn’t be seen as a measure of his political ability or leadership.
But it is. The press shouldn’t encourage it and the politicians shouldn’t pander to it, but what about the women themselves? I can understand the desire to use their influence to make a difference, but SamCam doing a photoshoot or Sarah Brown sitting in the audience while Gordon tells Piers all about proposing to her just gives everyone permission to see her as the little wifey — an electoral asset, there to make her husband look good and win him votes.
You can argue that these are just examples of a women making use of the influence their position gives them, but it’s not – it’s a woman making use of her husband’s position. If a woman wants to be political, she should do it in her own right – take Hillary Clinton as an example. If she wants to speak up for a cause, then fine, but don’t stand up on stage as Mrs Whoever and tell me that I absolutely must vote for Mr Whoever because he’s a lovely man who’s fathered six children.
And if they do, then it isn’t only the press, or the politicians, or the readers who are to blame for this wham-bam-Sam-Cam style rubbish that makes such tired reading. Infuriatingly, it’s also the women themselves.