MAD ABOUT THE BOY

 

Watch politicians being interviewed. There is nothing about them of spontaneity, nothing that indicates that they share a world with us and evaluate it in the same way and with the same moral cartography. They are unlikely to indulge in genuine introspection because they have no use for anything that might hobble their progress. Their maxim is an extension of the first line of the Hippocratic oath; First do no harm to my career. This is a default setting.

There is a quasi-autistic element to the modern politician. Spontaneity is largely absent, most political commentary is pre-rehearsed and anodyne, and watching politicians is slightly eerie. The purpose of AI, as I understand it, is to create machines that think and react like humans. Perhaps there is a side-project to create humans that think and react like machines.

Political interviews are largely chit-chat elevated to the status of political information and supported by rhetorical struts and stanchions. You take as much information away from one as you do from an interview with a sports manager or coach. It’s all done to keep the mummer’s play going, the ignoble falsehood that politicians are striving to serve their people. And watching most politicians is like watching a man trying to hold a 2p coin between the cheeks of his arse, so frightened are they of the wrong word or phrase or implied association.

Which is what makes it so refreshing to watch a short video of a meeting between two of my favourite people on the global stage, Elon Musk and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni. Both despised by the media for coming out of character, they apparently met up to discuss the possibilities of Tusk manufacturing there. Whatever, even if he just popped in for some Chianti and anti-pasti because he was in the area, their meeting was a joy to watch.

There is no audio, just a minute or so of the pair together. If you watch it, you will think; Why weren’t they my mum and dad? So much pleasure in one another’s company, such a display of humanism rather than transhumanism, undoubted sexual attraction.

Meloni plays the coquette, the finger-pointing Italian mama, and the perfect audience for Musk’s undoubted humorous streak. In the final pose for a photo, Meloni holds one arm around Musk’s waist, and goes to put her other across his chest, thinks better of this obvious gesture of abandon, and removes her arm. The way she looks at Musk when they are seated is that of a flirt who has met her match.

Musk goofballs around, to Meloni’s huge amusement, and the viewer recognises a man who knows he has just a small part of a woman’s heart because, as my late father once told me, you can laugh a woman into bed.

Meloni appealed to nationalism, Musk to freedom of speech, both heresies under the modern Inquisition. To me, it looks as though bad guys (and gals) have that much more fun.