"Don't Vote, It Only Encourages Them" Billy Connoly

Truth, The Cerebellum and The National Attention Span.
By Tony Philpott

In humans and in politicians, there are areas of the brain that have highly specialised functions. In the cerebral anatomy of a politician, some areas are more specialised than others. For instance, in the region just behind a government Minister’s frontal lobes there is a large cluster of neurons which are only activated during pre-election periods, financial crises and televised sound bites.

“Tell me, Minister, do you really think cancelling the Monorail linking Clonakilty to Bundoran will save the taxpayer €170 billion?”

“Well, Charlie, the projected savings will, of course have certain variables within it, but this Government’s policy is to ensure that blah blah blah…”

In the time between the conclusion of Charlie Bird’s question and the beginning of the Minister’s answer, minute electrical charges instantaneously jumped across a billion synaptic connections in search of an appropriate response. In an immeasurably small fraction of time, plausibilities were retrieved from deep within the Ministerial cerebellum and tested against hypotheses stored in his frontal lobes - in the space of a nano-second, neurons and brain-chemistry reacted and combined to form the molecular structure of a lie.

An Irish Independent editorial declared some time ago “No sane person expects 100% truth from Politicians at election time”. A statement which implies that the results of elections are predicated by people with less than the full compliment of marbles.

So let’s be under no illusions here, we, the electorate, are indeed less than sane. In the last election you didn’t vote for a politician, a party or a manifesto, you didn’t even vote for the smiling Fianna Fail/Fine Gael face on the poster – you voted for a trillion brain cells and a vast network of nerve-endings dedicated exclusively to providing rapid detours around the truth.

Unfortunately too few of us will detect the detour until about three years after the hypothetical Monorail has gone 12 billion over budget and the Tribunal of Inquiry will reveal why its construction contract was awarded to a Kerry merry-go-round operator with a 5 Euro, off-the-shelf-company registered in Liechtenstein.

No use complaining now about the tax-hikes-that-would-never-happen – because when that particular politician was lying with convincing sincerity, you were too interested in who’d be evicted from Big Brother to pay the slightest bit of attention.

And Politicians know this.

On their first day in the Oireachtas, all newly-elected representatives are brought to a small room where they are given the Four Secret Maxims.

Maxim number 1: “No one is paying attention”.

Maxim number 2: “In the unlikely event that anyone is paying attention – that attention will not be of a duration sufficient for them to remember anything that will damage your chances of re-election”.

Maxim number 3: “If you have been - or are about to be – Tribunaled, the matter under investigation will have the fault of the Minister who preceded you”.

Maxim number 4: “If you want to know why the Irish public won’t even remember the name of the Minister who preceded you, see Maxim No 1”.

Even when confronted by members of the media who instinctively know when the response to their question is an evasion or an outright lie, the average Politician is armed with the fact that time and space are on his side - TV-time, radio-time and printed-space. And when operating in these dimensions he/she knows he/she has the perfect defensive weapon - The Long Waffle.

You might think the Long Waffle is a lengthier-than-usual Belgian breakfast pastry, but Politicians being interviewed in the broadcast media know that a long waffle eats up airtime. Secure in the knowledge that that radio interview will have to stop for a commercial break, or that Pat Kenny must abbreviate the Late Late Show interview because Rosaleen Linehan is up next and ready to do some amusing accents, the Politician waffles at length until his interrogator simply must move on.

But really, how do they get away with it? We have, or had, Farrell, Browne, Bowman – all of them incisive, astute inquisitors – they use their inquiring intellects to probe nightly for truth on our behalf. But that’s the problem. They are using their intellects. Wrong part of the body entirely. They should use their thumbs.

Pressed firmly against the throat of, say, the Minister for Taking Money From Pensioners and Giving It To Developers, Vincent Brown’s thumbs could squeeze for the truth. No penetrating questions, no confronting the Minister with his own contradictory statements, no putting pressure on him by citing statistics which prove his duplicity – the only pressure required is pressure on the oesophageal region.

Reporters and journalists, who receive disingenuous answers from rural politicians speaking through their gombeen arses, should swat those politicians about the skull with their own plaid head-garments until they answer the question honestly.

With such a threat, the question: “Minister, what do you say to accusations that your department is riddled with nepotism, cronyism and corruption?” is more likely to elicit the response; “’Tis absolutely true, Charlie – we’re up to our shaggin’ armpits in sleaze, backhanders and suspect tenders from Military Helicopter suppliers – and not only that, but we’re inefficient as well, so we are.”

The politician’s lie can live because of the truth in Secret Maxim number 1.
“No one is paying attention”

But of course, I’m being deliberately ironic when I blame the brevity of the national attention span on Politicians’ ability to walk away from their lies unscathed. The real blame belongs with a media who are restricted in their use of physical force and political-brain chemistry configured specifically to lying. These are the things which really will ensure the complete and final demise of political integrity – these are the things which allow those we don’t evict from the Big Brother House of the Oireachtas to continue to remain in residence and to rule. Honest.