Posted on 05/09/2015 1:20:49 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Forget Vince Cable. Forget, if you can, Ed Balls (and I know that’s hard, because what a joyous result that was). Expel from your mind the image of Nick Clegg crying into his cornflakes this morning while texting his old pals in the Euro-oligarchy to see if they will give him a new plush job that involves no contact with pesky plebs. For last night there was an even bigger loser than those guys. Russell Brand. Or ‘Rusty Rockets’, as his politics-packed Twitterfeed has it. Rusty being the operative word, for now we know that the much-hyped ability of slebs like Brand to sway public sentiment is in a serious state of decomposition.
This election has just done to Brand what the last election did to Clegg: exposed that his powers of persuasion over the little people are nothing more than a Guardianista fantasy. In 2010 every liberal was banging on about Cleggmania and saying Nick was the Obama of Britain. (Obama should have sued.) Then the election results came in and revealed that Clegg’s Lib Dems actually lost seats – 57, down from 61 in 2005 (and now, of course, his party is wiped out).
This time round, leftish observers talked up the ‘Brand effect’, the possibility that Rusty’s reversal on not voting and his interview with and endorsement of Miliband might help swing the election. ‘The Tories should be worried’, declared the Guardian. Yeah, not so much. If Brand had any effect – and he didn’t – it was only to damn Labour even more than it was already damned.
The bigging-up of Brand’s intervention in the election was seat-shiftingly embarrassing. ‘He has nearly 10 million Twitter followers… he is listened to by hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Britons… Russell Brand matters’, said Owen Jones, clearly viewing Brand as a kind of priestly figure with a mystical hold over that inscrutable blob (us lot) that politicians can’t connect with. In another piece, Jones said ‘Miliband’s best route to young voters is Russell Brand’, not stopping to think that it might be super-weird that the leader of the alleged party of working people can only speak to the youth via a floppy-haired 40-year-old tabloid filler who hasn’t made a decent gag since 2008.
A friend of mine lives opposite Russell Brand and snapped this picture of Ed Milliband leaving his house…urm pic.twitter.com/kHGVWFbpVZ
— Elisa Misu Solaris (@ElisaMisu) April 27, 2015
Elsewhere, commentators hailed Brand as the man who has ‘access to voters politicians can’t reach’. Brand was treated as a celeb conduit, a connector of the political class with the plebs, someone who could actually turn things around. ‘The Tories should be worried.’ People seriously said that.
We can laugh at it all now, and we should – in fact, it’s important that we do. Because it turns out that Brand’s ability to get people lining up behind Miliband was pure bluster. This calls into question, not only the impact of Russell’s silly, increasingly David Icke-like ‘Trews’ videos, but also the whole modern trend for shoving celebs into the political limelight in the desperate hope that they might get the lazy little people interested and engaged in political stuff.
Hilariously, the very same people who accuse the Murdoch papers of brainwashing their readers into voting for the Tories – such undiluted snobbery – believed that a celeb with a webcam and a lively Twitter presence could simply click his fingers and get the hordes voting Labour. But he couldn’t. And it isn’t hard to see why. It’s because people aren’t idiots. They want substance, seriousness, not finger-wagging gags about EVIL TORIES and instructions to ‘save Britain’ by giving the nod to Ed.
Brandmania ultimately spoke to the gaping, chasm-like disconnection of the Labour movement, the liberal elite and the Twitterati from ordinary people. Incapable of speaking directly to the masses, they had to employ a sleb to try to do it on their behalf. Their reliance on Rusty revealed their own lack of any serious message, or any means of communicating it to the people. And now they are dumbfounded by the election results, utterly unable to comprehend why their favoured party did so badly. ‘But we had RUSSELL BRAND on our side!’ It’s amazing – they’re like medieval kings, staring in bemusement at the throng, wondering why it refuses to heed the messages of their long-haired missionary.
David Icke should sue. LOL
Some on the right seem determined to make this guy someone.
I suppose he is so simple minded and aggressive in his statements, that he is easy to write articles about.
So there they are, creating him so that they don’t have to work at writing.
I see this as the death or at least incapacitation of the new estrategy/emedia for vote getting. the person running for office still has to rely on the people. if they aint buyin then you aint goin. twits and all.
Actually, Clegg IS the "Obama of Britain" -- he's done for the Lib-Dems in Parliament what Obama has done for Democrats in Congress.
Brand does have a unique quality, at least in my view.
It's an attribute he shares with very few other people in the public view, one notable kindred fellow being The Usurper, current pretender to the American Throne.
He is (in my view) totally unwatchable.
This is not hyperbole. When either of these appear on my TV I either turn the channel, turn it off or (if there are others watching) leave the room.
There is something that they both exude that is so palpably smarmy and purely evil that I cannot even look.
I have literally seen men with their brains splattered on the ground. As horrible as those memories are, they are easier for me than the visage of either Brand or the pResident.
Russell Brand can sway my opinion for sure. I can pretty well guarantee that I'll be on the other side of whatever issue it is that he's pushing.
>> Some on the right seem determined to make this guy someone.
No. He once challenged MSM agitprop, but no one on the right can honestly defend Brand’s habitual Leftwing nonsense.
This is the Spectator Magazine, and conservatives seem to love this guy.
I think that my point stands.
Russell Brand. Isn’t he the filthy looking fella who hasn’t had a shower since Thatcher was PM ?
What eyes. Reminds me of a cross between Charlie Manson and Saddam Hussein.
I wish. It would be a dream come true to see the RAT party reduced to a paltry 8 seats in Congress.
lol
‘Cept the RINOs would easily fill in the gap.
In 2015, no bill has passed Congress without 93% of Democrat votes. So Democrats in Congress are doing much better than Republicans.
But then the Reptilians would get him...
I think he’s the hippie looking guy who does all those stupid movies.
Pray America is waking
No one - not even a Brit - is going to listen to a “sleb” who hasn’t bathed in 6 months.
a “sleb”
Isn’t that the oddest word?
Do you think it is just short for “celebrity” or do you think there’s an allusion to “slob” in there too?
Or maybe I just think that because Brand is the sleb in question?
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