The oxygen of publicity is a well known phenomenon, as is the old cliche - There is no such thing as bad publicity.
Until a few years ago there have been the relatively harmless forms of attention seeking we have always witnessed, from rock stars smashing up hotel rooms, reality show celebrities taking their clothes off, children throwing tantrums by the sweet counter in the supermarket and cats and dogs jumping all over you when you are trying to quietly watch the television.
Some of those make tabloid headlines while others do little more than mildly irritate us, but there is a more sinister side when extremist organisations court publicity by claiming ownership of atrocities they did not commit, simply to get their name in the media.
Somewhere between the two lies the outpourings of politicians who lack the talent to get attention through promoting different, well thought out and sensible alternative policies, and who instead desperately resort to grabbing headlines by leveraging their existing voice by saying something outrageous.
It is akin to an ageing rock star dropping his trousers in a hotel lobby. It is bound to make headlines and get him talked about…but it means precisely nothing in the greater scheme of things.
The danger is when minor politicians, or worse, those politicians who aspire to be future leaders, indulge in this kind of pants-dropping publicity seeking. It eats into the trust the wider public has in democracy and government, either by the less well informed being taken in by it, or that it sows seeds of doubt in the minds of some of the other observers.
Perhaps most blatant of examples are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene in the US who has a long history of embracing baseless conspiracy theories. These range from claiming election voter fraud in 2020, to floating the possibility that the California wildfire that killed 84 people in 2018 were in some way engineered by the then Governor Jerry Brown because he wanted to clear the path for a high speed rail project. She also floated the possibility that the fires could have been started by “lasers or blue beams of light” shot down from space by allies of Brown who were said to be in the solar energy industry.
Both Facebook and Twitter have banned Greene because of her lies and misdirection, but the trend continues with the likes of the gun-loving Lauren Boebert, who, alongside Greene heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address earlier this month in an obvious display of attention seeking. It worked, they made newspaper headlines with their antics.
Closer to home we have Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je who described the ruling DDP party as ‘shameless’. It achieved nothing politically, added nothing to the debate, but it nevertheless achieved what they wanted and that was to make headlines and perhaps sow some seeds of lies and doubts in some people’s minds. Particularly those who are more easily influenced by such antics.
The same appears to be happening closer to home with recent hysterics about an imagined egg shortage and equally non-existent electricity shortage from some quarters of the political establishment here. These together with rants about media influence, current government policy and the professional integrity of Health Minister Chen Shizhong from a less serious party. All of which can be classed as attention and headline seeking rants with no real substance or evidence to back them up.
While attention seeking bluster and tantrums have grown with the advent of more accessible media, mostly social media, to give them a bigger platform, it is also true the same games have been played in the past aimed at targeting mainstream media headlines.
Descending into the murky waters of attention seeking is not risk free. Overdo it and people see through it, find it irritating and ignore you. You also need to get the timing right as if you say something deliberately outrageous one day, the next day a showbiz couple announce their divorce and immediately take you off the front page.
While in most parts of the world attention seeking is commonplace on the political stage, it is far less common to see the relatives of politicians wading in on mainstream and social media with politically motivated comments.
There have, of course, been many influential partners of country leaders, Michelle Obama is a good example, but in the main they do not comment on political issues and work in the background on things like social issues. Obama concentrated on her "Let's Move!" program to help reduce childhood obesity and her "Reach Higher Initiative" which provides students with the guidance and resources to go on to post-high school educations and professional careers.
There appears to be a worrying trend in Taiwan where partners, one in particular, and even parents of political figures are regularly pontificating on political issues. This cannot be healthy for democracy simply because they have neither the political expertise or, more importantly, the mandate to insert themselves into any ongoing political debate.
Those close to influential political figures have an obligation not to set themselves up as political commentators. Of course they are free to have their own opinions but to use power-by-proxy by dint of a personal relationship is morally wrong. Indeed, there are historical examples where the use of inherited and supposed political legitimacy has not ended well.
While this only taints a democracy to a small degree and no one really takes what these people say too seriously, it is worrying that some unelected individuals feel they have the ability to influence the public by dint of family relationships.
Helping your husband or wife with their career and being supportive is fair enough, but inserting yourself into the political debate when you have no mandate to do so is really a step too far.
Tinkerty Tonk...
