COMMENTARY: Getting ideas above their station

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By Anneli Sundberg
     
      I am worried about the tone of political discussion in this country.
      It troubles me deeply, just as it does Deputy Speaker Sirkka-Liisa Anttila and many of my colleagues.
      I would not be a worthy member of my profession if I were not troubled.
      The politician-cobblers are not sticking to their last.
      Instead they pour out their feelings with no sense of restraint in online diaries and blogs that nobody is keeping an eye on. Any Net-user can encounter a politician's diary, even a child. It is a quite appalling state of affairs.
     
How can a politician be so rash?
      Does the politician not realise that he or she is endangering the credibility of all politicians by exposing to all and sundry his everyday thoughts and actions in this way?
      Where is the politicians' dignity, their statesmanlike responsibility and healthy fear of publicity?
      Only a journalist (and possibly also the Deputy Speaker of Parliament) knows what is fitting for a politician and what is not, and how he should think and behave.
      Do they really not get this?
     
It is just not done for the politician to go tramping over the journalist's turf. It is a perilous exercise.
      Some politicians have completely lost all sense of self-control. They write their diaries in the Net, because it is "so therapeutic"!
      Hey, HALLO, politicians! The politicians' only therapist is the journalist, period.
      I do not recommend this self-help approach. It is as if a patient would go sticking acupuncture needles into his own head.
     
I do hope it has become clear by now just how blindly I respect and revere journalists and their professional skills. I have been in this business a long time and I have noticed that I am seldom if ever wrong - and the same goes for other journalists.
      Already at the beginning of the last century journalists noticed that their profession demands exceptional intellectual properties. The observation holds true still today. Exceptional intelligence is a hallmark of the trade.
      Exceptional intellectual qualities are not required of politicians. It is for this reason that they absolutely require the interpreting services of a journalist.
      Some politicians who have lost their grip on reality even actually believe that they can create their own image.
      This is a ghastly mistake.
     
Consider the warning example of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen. He was analysed and packaged up and given an official stamp: a boring family man from Lepsämä.
      But Vanhanen would not stay in his packet, and now the entire Centre Party is suffering for it.
      They really should believe the journalists, these people.
     
A journalist creates a politician's image with his or her unerring psychological instincts.
      It does not do for a politician to go meddling with the image or the looks of other politicians.
      It is not political good form: a politician may not call another politician an olm*. A journalist may. Hence animal comparisons should be left to the journalists. They use them responsibly and precisely - as they do with all other comparisons.
      If a politician is for some reason or other absolutely obliged to call another politician names, then he can take a lesson from the famous historical opus Tamminiemen pesänjakajat [The Executors of Tamminiemi, 1981]. The book contains one classic characterisation by a journalist colleague of mine about the MEP Paavo Väyrynen, a former chairman of the Centre Party and 1980s political heavyweight whom the Finnish public refused to anoint as Prime Minister or President.
      "By the time the dessert is being served, the ladies at the table are already barely stifling their boredom, since Väyrynen is as dull as the apparently inevitable menu at a Finnish official dinner: as slimy as slightly salted salmon, as dry as reindeer fillet, and as cold as cranberry parfait."
     
Naturally, no politician could come up with such a degree of subtlety and refinement, but I suppose they could try.
      Menus have become slightly more European over the years. Perhaps the gravlax might therefore need to be exchanged for oysters.
      The last time I ate out somewhat on the "large" side, there was no salmon at all on offer, but there were oysters.
     
I particularly respect and appreciate the moral fibre of our journalists and their heroic efforts to entertain the reader.
      I enjoy the stories where the journalist details in interesting and titillating fashion the hidden twists and turns of the private life of leading politicians. I enjoy it even more when, on the following page, the journalist condemns the above-mentioned turns and the politician's morals.
      What's that you say? Double standards?
      Not in the least! It's critical journalism.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.4.2006
     
Note: For the uninitiated, an olm is a blind, cave-dwelling, eel-like European salamander (Proteus anguinus). It is also coincidentally the word used in her blog by SDP Member of Parliament Susanna Rahkonen to describe Mikko Alkio, a candidate in the race to take the job of Centre Party Secretary. Rahkonen's comment prompted a feisty blogging riposte from Alkio himself, and also caused the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Sirkka-Liisa Anttila (Centre Party) to issue a reprimand.


See also:
  COMMENTARY: Of olms and others who are quick to anger (3.4.2006)

ANNELI SUNDBERG / Helsingin Sanomat
anneli.sundberg@sanoma.fi