‘If you want a picture of the future, Winston, imagine a coddled manbaby dancing at his wedding to his sixth babymamma … forever.’
There is a very short video making the rounds of Finnish PM Sanna Marin dancing in a friend’s apartment. Somehow this has become a news item. Reporting on this is out of all proportion to any conceivable public interest. It made it onto Radio 4’s flagship PM broadcast. The formally articulated agenda by which the focus is justified is:
- She is partying too much and not focused on governing. Putin could roll his tanks over the border while she’s lipsyncing to Kelis.
- Finnish Prime Ministers should observe some decorum, because we complain politicians are not like us, and then insist they behave… not like us. We are complex.
- Maybe someone alluded to drugs and drugs are bad, because we cannot understand that someone might use the word #jauhojengi in jest
The fact that this story made it into the foreign-policy averse British media tells you the newsiness of it is nothing to do with that, and as for the idea that PMs should exhibit the dignity of the office … There is always an unspoken element to any news agenda.
The unspoken element to the reporting on this one is:
- She is a young, attractive woman
- She is in power
- She seems to be aware of, or not ashamed of and trying to actively hide, fact number 1
It is that last one that really does for her. In our society this is pretty damning and really not seemly at all. Women are permitted to: be attractive; be in power; enjoy themselves. They are not allowed to do any 2 or more of these things at once. Attractive must be mitigated by being competitive with other women and a bit broken (Love Island). Powerful must be mitigated by being repellent (Cersei Lannister) or murdered by your sulky bidey in (Khaleesi). It would be simple if this unspoken element was articulated so we know where we stand. Notably none of the reporting on Marin mentions her politics or anything that would normally make a politician newsworthy, or which might matter to listeners in the UK. ‘Marin, who brought her country into NATO at a time of unprecedented crisis, overturning 70 years of Finnish policy, has enjoyed a drink in private with some friends’. The punishment for any editor insisting the last bit of that is what should be on the news agenda should be being forced to watch Boris dancing at his wedding on repeat until the end of time.
