IN PRAISE OF DICKHEADS

To the more sombre of my fellow citizens, you know the kind, moralizing politicians who’ve been fiddling their expenses, or the majority of people who live in the center of Bath who’ve got their heads so far up their arses that they can’t be pulled down again, or come to think of it just about everyone in Yorkshire, yes and all those BBC national treasures like Stephen Fry and Brian Cox always showing everyone how nice they are and how much they know about everything… to all these so very propriety people the phrase dickhead is almost certainly likely to cause offence. Perhaps it’s because it describes them so perfectly and in their heart of hearts, underneath all the image presentation shit which they’re so good at doing, they know it! Know that they’re dickheads, particularly in the minds of young people who perhaps not so deluded as they once were can take a cool razor sharp cynical edge that instantly cuts through the crap and perceives things how they really are. That underneath all the Mister Nice Guy stuff they put over to try and convince you that hey we’re just like you really, honest we are, the real truth is different and that they’re actually plain unvarnished dickheads.

Okay, let’s take the recent exploit of Brooks Newmark, a Minister of the Crown no less who openly and without any hesitation showed his cock and balls over the Internet to someone he thought was a Swedish model without even considering for a moment what he was doing or even thinking to check her identity. Well it just makes you wonder. What kind of a dickhead is that? Well Brooks Newmark may sound like a propriety brand of men’s underwear you can buy in any of the big retail outlets only he isn’t. He was a man specially chosen by the British Prime Minister for his political ability, tact and wisdom to be a Minister in his Government. Nice choice Mr Cameron! In which case one should ask, who actually is the real dickhead in this matter? Is it Brooks Newmark, Minister of the Crown, for committing the serious criminal offence of publically flashing his dick for the whole world to see or is it the Tory Prime Minister who specially chose him to represent Government policy to the British people? Or are they both just a pair of dickheads together?

Dickhead? David Cameron? How dare you sir? I can hear the whole silver-haired gang of Tory MPs or Tory Party Conference blue rinses bristling with outrage and high dudgeon at any slur intended or not against their beloved leader but it must not be forgotten that this so called gentleman came close to permanently giving away a large part of the United Kingdom to just 12% of its population without asking the rest of us, that’s you and me, the other 88%, what they thought of it. In other words, actually destroying this country as we all know it! Indeed, without asking the great majority of democratically elected MPs in the British Parliament what they thought of it! Now quite frankly, is that the action of a dickhead or isn’t it?

Actually the Brooks Newmark affair is just a case of two dickheads singing from the same hymn sheet, only has anyone heard so much as a word from the other two leaders of the main political parties about David Cameron’s judgement? Not a peep! Perhaps it’s because they too are seriously deficient when it comes to making serious political judgements. Let’s take the case of the saintly Ed Miliband. Well who was it Ed who allowed Gordon Brown, you know, Dark Gordon, former Labour Prime Minister and possibly the greatest dickhead in modern political history to dictate Labour Party policy over Scottish Independence, make promises all over the place supposedly on behalf of Labour and just about everyone else when this grossly discredited lummox who came so close to bankrupting Britain by turning the nation’s finances over to a gang of criminally cheating bankers. Yes you, dickhead Ed, handed over Labour Party policy in this matter to a man who was literally allowed to say and promise anything he liked! And furthermore, didn’t need to keep any of the promises he made because he’s a totally discredited backbench nothing at Westminster, and you allowed this dark, glowering, mumbling no-one to say anything he fancied!

So tell me Ed Milipede, was allowing this totally discredited dickhead to completely take over the Labour Party agenda on Scotland and say anything he liked without consulting the British people what you might call democracy?

On another dickhead digression altogether, why is it that whenever I catch a glimpse of David Cameron’s Secretary of State for Community Affairs Eric Pickles I see a kind of cross between Cyril Smith and Heinrich Himmler. There’s something about those narrow sinister eyes in that fat chubby face and his droning on in that flat Yorkshire peasant accent which of course Himmler never had. But then his tone is actually lyrical compared to the fearful rasp of Yorkshire Amoeba William Hague, once Margaret Thatcher’s favourite schoolboy and Party Conference sweetie. His hectoring just about everyone in his Yorkshire cheese grater along with his sharp, main chance capacity to pose with celebrities out on do-gooding occasions has made him a political dickhead for all seasons. Alas he recently disappeared overnight from the Government’s third most senior job. One minute he and his venomous close comrade in arms Bomber Kerry were threatening Russian President Putin with just about everything. The next he was down in the shit pit as Leader of the Commons. Perhaps he was just too hostile towards Israel in the recent Gaza conflict. It wouldn’t be the first time he couldn’t keep his mouth shut in that direction, allowing his Arabist Foreign Office prejudices to get the better of him.

Even so, as a dickhead he was nothing compared to national treasures such as Stephen Fry, Brian Cox and Jamie Oliver. People who know everything there is to know about everything from art, science and culture, atoms, the stars and the Universe, and what we and our children should or should not eat and why. The endlessly televised wisdom of these great fountains of knowledge, initially interesting, has now swung full circle. The public has now had enough of them and its patience at having them endlessly shoved in front of their eyes, particularly by the BBC, as affable communicating professors of everything has worn thin as a rag and they are now perceived for what they actually are. Tedious dickheads who haven’t yet got it into their heads that their jovial knowledgeability, their over the board universal know-all presentation and their strictures and admonitions are now boring the pants off everyone. People have had enough of fat, skinny or hand waving encyclopedias and the dickheads of program planning at the BBC who really believe they know what the nation wants haven’t yet cottoned onto the fact.

Much the same thing is happening with football and ITV. Those likely lad footballing commentators with all the same carefully geared working class patter for what once used to be an out and out working class sport all dress the same way because they’re told to, and do their best to talk the same way because that’s what they think people expect. Well actually lads they don’t. Just a bit of intelligent comment at the interval if you are able without all the promotion and egging up of players’ performances for the transfer meat market. And please, no analysis of performance strategy like you think you’re actually capable of serious strategic consideration, and yes, try and cut out one piece superfluous bullshit after another like you’re trying to impress the viewing public just how knowledgeable you are when what you’re actually doing is putting yourself over as worthy of hire by the company for another season’s business. All the old cockney dropping of ‘h’s here and there along with a working class London accent has run long enough and is now wearing thin on anyone who’s not a plain football moron. You may not know it lads but you’re beginning to sound like dickheads more than anything else.

Now that’s okay for people like Nick Clegg and Vince Cable. People know what they’re like! They’re political salesmen. Selling the nation their Party line and naturally full of bullshit. It’s what they do. They’re wired that way to tell people lies and make them believe that they’re really good guys. They can’t help themselves. Even though people are fully aware that they’re dickheads, they just keep on going, sincerely believing they can convince you. It’s like they’re high on their own lies. Peddling their bullshit because they really believe it! Yes, we’ll do this and that when really they haven’t got the slightest intention and if they once had, well, they can always say they ran out of money and cop a knighthood three years later! That’s Vince Cable’s future. From Scarecrow to Knight of the Realm! Just wait and see!

Dickheads are people who are so full of themselves and their shit that they simply don’t know it anymore. They’ve lost any self-consciousness they might have once had. Can’t see themselves as others might see them. Don’t know what they’ve become… pontificating self-righteous prats that have earned the scorn of young people who they think they can patronize. They firmly believe that they know exactly what people want and how to talk to them. Really and absolutely believe that they’re not talking down to them and in thinking that way THEY ACTUALLY ARE because when you lose the self-consciousness of who and what you are, that’s what you actually come to do. You become separated from people in general. Become a creature for yourself and for your own aspirations and wisdom. You begin talking across to people as someone imparting your own views rather than having a dialogue with them, and theirs. You become self-contained. A presenter of who you are and what you believe yourself to be. And the more separated you become the more you turn into a showman. Your very own politician or television celebrity. You become a dickhead.

It works for a while. Like you become a kind of novelty. Have a kind of novelty effect that’s promoted on a regular basis. But in time you’re perceived as a peddler. A know-all. You don’t know that you’ve become a dickhead, and that you’re not everyone’s favourite pack of savories anymore. You try and become a little more human. Reveal a few little secrets about yourself. A few catchy home truths about what you did in your youth and how you got to be where you are. You know that something’s not right and you try to adjust. Try to put yourself over as a bit more human. Hoping you’ll make people love you again, but they won’t. You’ve shot your bolt. Become an absolute dickhead in the mind of the public and you can’t be anything else. They’ve had quite enough of you and are moving on. To the next nascent dickhead if necessary, but not you. You can’t be un-dick-headed! Can’t get rid of your squirmy dickhead image! The public have swallowed you whole and pooped you out into the cesspit of old news, old faces and old tedium. You’re a has-been in the chicken coop of dickheads. Yes, that’s where you are, and when someone walks by you in the street and gives you a certain look then you’ll definitely know that you’re plain fucking ancient.

The politically ancient dickheads get knighthoods or top jobs on company boards. They grope a few secretaries in lifts and that’s just about it. Maybe an autobiography or a novel if Rupert Murdoch thinks they’re worth it. The celebrity national treasure dickheads just disappear, then re-emerge twenty years later in some vile court case scandal. The sporting dickheads piss off to Spain or Italy running some racket or other or eventually turn up in Barnsley selling vegetables where no-one under thirty’s heard of them. The state of being a dickhead doesn’t last. It’s what modern society, modern culture turns people into. They consciously or unconsciously become permeated with something they’re initially not. They become imbued with the spirit of believing that they’re somehow, someone different, something better than anyone else, and their heads, their whole being is full of it. They’ve become overwhelmed by their own testosterone. Their overweening biological mechanics has literally gone to their heads.

So when you hear about them in the news, or see them pontificating on television, full of themselves anywhere in fact, please, give them a little more understanding. A little less scorn! They really can’t help themselves. They’re controlled by their own impulses to be what they are! Some of you might say that they all just need locking up and the world would be a much better, much safer place without them. For myself I tend to disagree. That the political dickheads are dangerous might be the case, but on the whole I like to think that they bring colour, showmanship and vitality to an only too often drab existence. Where on earth would we actually be without them I wonder? Indeed, our society, our world would be an altogether more boring place.  

Altogether then I only urge this. That we take them all, everything they say and do with a big pinch of salt. Dickheads are easily recognizable so let’s enjoy all their bullshit and keep our guard up so we don’t allow them to take over our lives. That’s their true function really. It’s not to entertain, to persuade or convince. It’s to make each and every one of us more aware. More conscious of ourselves. Much bigger and better human beings capable of helping each other. Capable of dealing wisely with all those difficulties that emerge in our lives. Quickly seeing bullshit for what it is and treating it with scorn!