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Make a loose fist with your hand. Now press the thumb to the inside of the finger. Or let it rest on top. You have to pretend you are giving someone an invisible banknote. great. They are doing Clinton’s finger (or Obama’s or Blair’s or Cameron’s finger). Use this gesture to emphasize a point when you speak. It conveys determination and resolve without the arrogance implicit in a jab finger.
Before Donald Trump, we end with our first lesson in politics. Next week: Message Discipline. Come up with a catchphrase like “we’re all in this together” and be prepared to repeat it regardless of context.
I think I am describing to young readers how robotic and over-managed politics has been in the recent past. Well, visit YouTube, friends. If nothing else, Trump’s rise has exposed the broad public’s complacency and consistency. I wonder if the same rebellion is spreading to other fields.
Take My World Media. Why do podcasts work so well? Because in the end they are messy, elliptical, directive, and averse to other theories. (In the case of Joe Rogan, perhaps the biggest media personality in the Anglophone world, there can’t be much difference between his on-air and off-air speech. Those raised against him, inaudible in comparison.
Even the world’s most popular sport may be unraveling under the intellectual control of micromanagement perfectionist Pep Guardiola. Arsenal, coached by one apostle, is amazing as the clockwork in Switzerland is amazing. So is the gap between players. Free kicks and corners are modeled on ballet steps. Even in the open game, we fans are familiar with the practiced moves that get the ball to the right touchline, where the opposition defenders swarm, and then the diagonal pass releases the remaining Arsenal forward into the empty left midfield.
It’s the most “engineered” football in the world, give or take Pep’s own Manchester City, it’s easier to admire than to love another. But both are having disappointing seasons. A slightly independent Liverpool is thriving, clearly without a better team. If they take over the Premier League, the managerial era – the bane of modern fans – must decline.
Years ago, this column was “regretted.”The death of the maverickHe said. The argument is that there is so much information about what works in most industries that everyone gathers things the same way. Songwriters know that Spotify will insert a hook in the first 30 seconds to keep listeners from skipping a track. New-build apartments have the same kitchen-living room plan. Football became rigid. My mistake was not expecting people to rebel at some point. It’s surprising how politics, which are often low on trends in other areas, are ahead of the curve. I nursed a comfort as I watched Trump’s unnervingly effective inaugural address. Its success sends a signal to other over-managed sectors: there are rewards for breaking out of strict form.
I am writing this in Los Angeles, where I once lived. It has no dominant architectural style. It has no clear center. (“Downtown” is something of a misnomer.) A dark shopping mall might house a restaurant or gallery. In the absence of pattern, I think it’s like life, like a flow of experience, except in one prosperous world city.
In the year After the Great Fire of London in 1666, various scholars proposed a plan to rebuild the site from the original principles. Most wanted to bring some Euclidean order to the laboratory. Their design – full of right angles and other horrors – got nowhere. Otherwise, London would now be a monstrous grid or (Christopher Wren’s idea) another European layout of piazzas and boulevards.
Well, LA, one of London’s least designed rivals of the great Western cities, needs to change in many ways. Even before his recent injury, he had problems. Ultimately, though, unless something in human identity is challenged structurally and territorially, the appeal of this place cannot be dimmed.
Email Janan at janan.ganesh@ft.com
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