“Ball-crushingly” banal
The editors of Media Lens have spotted a new media meme:
“At his debut “Colgate” summit here with Mr Bush, Tony Blair cavorted in a shirt and sweater, and a pair of “ball-crushingly tight, dark-blue corduroys”, in the words of the Great British ambassador of the day…. Not so Gordon, in the same dark suit he might have worn as Chancellor at a Guildhall banquet.”
“Mr Blair and Mr Bush were fond of appearing together in casual attire, including, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, Mr Blair’s “ball-crushingly tight dark-blue corduroys”.
Downing Street aides said Mr Brown will not take any sartorial risks. “He may remove his tie,” ventured one official.”
“The
personal tailoring ensured the cut was on the generous side with no room for the “too tight to mention” appearance of Mr Blair’s trousers when he went for a walk with President Bush and his dog Spot at Camp David in February 2001.
Photographs on that occasion show Mr Blair vainly attempting to wedge his hands into the pockets of his tight-squeeze trousers but being unable to insert them for fear of cutting off the circulation.”
“They wore suits and ties, rather than “ball-crunchingly tight” slacks. They shared experiences of Scottish Presbyterian church services, instead of Colgate toothpaste.
Of course Gordon Brown and George Bush bonded at Camp David – it was their job to do so – but there was clearly a greater degree of formality in their relationship than there was between the American President and Tony Blair.”
“The new Prime Minister has asked for a more “focused” and “business-like” atmosphere. You can be sure there will be no “ball-crushingly tight dark-blue corduroys” so memorably described by Christopher Meyer.”
“When Gordon Brown meets George Bush at Camp David today, we can be sure that he will not emulate his predecessor in wearing what the then British ambassador described as “ball-crushingly tight” trousers.”
“But Mr Brown has ensured there are obvious contrasts with his predecessor on this, the first substantive overseas trip of his premiership. Gone is Mr Blair’s casual Camp David attire – the “ball-crushingly tight” trousers described by Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US.”
“Brown wanted his Washington debut to look nothing like the Bush-Blair love-ins of the past, and he succeeded. Out went the groin-squeezingly tight jeans, in came the suits.”
“A very different British prime minister arrived at Camp David for his first summit with George Bush last night. Unlike Tony Blair, Mr Brown will not swagger around in tight jeans…”
“He eschewed the New Labour-issue tight jumper and even tighter jeans, as sported by Tony Blair at his first Camp David summit in 2001.”
“At his first Camp David meeting with George Bush, more than six long years ago, Tony Blair was told that his host wanted to be informal. Eager to please, he wore a pair of bollock-crushingly tight jeans and seemed to try to ape Bush by adopting a sort of cowboy gait.
‘Gordon does not do jeans,’ as one of his friends puts it. Nor does he do cowboy. Gordon Brown only has two outfits in his prime ministerial wardrobe. One is a suit. The other is a suit without a tie. The latter is as informal as he gets. Relaxed but businesslike is the impression that Mr Brown would like to be projected from Camp David.”
“There’ll be no Colgate moment, no movie with the wives, no chinos that are – in the words of the British Ambassador at the time – “ball crushingly tight”. This first Camp David summit between Prime Minister and President will not, must not, be the same as the last first summit.”
And so on, and so forth. You get the picture – journalists appear to be obsessed with either jeans or Tony Blair’s balls. As the editors comment,
‘It shows the incestuous nature of the media village – they read each other and often write for each other. There was a mention in the Times on July 28 and 29 – maybe the other papers picked it up from there with several mentions on July 31 and one today.
You have to keep pinching yourself that there really are hundreds of thousands of people rotting in graves in Iraq, with millions fleeing in a WWII-style tidal wave of refugees. The media response to this appalling crime and vast suffering – I mean you could hardly dream up a more nightmarish disaster – and to public demands for a real change in policy, is to joke about “ball-crushingly tight” trousers. And they even try to pass this cosmetic difference off as actually significant. As Chomsky says, these people really are morally depraved – there’s no other way to explain it. They are just not able to understand what they’ve done, what their government has done, in Iraq.
By the way, there were more press mentions of the tight trousers than of the latest Oxfam report [.pdf] of the cataclysm in Iraq.’
Filed under: Media, News and politics, UK | 4 Comments
Tags: Tony Blair
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LoL!
A Peabody for creativity to the Guardian.
Thanks for making me cry. Don’t worry. Murdoch is going to sew it all up into one huge efficient conglomerate anyway. When he owns all the media on the planet it will be easier to know who to ignore.
Btw, the latest Media Lens media alert is up on their front page (http://www.medialens.org) now. I recommend subscribing to them – they’re very good.
I’m subscribed. Thanks, Jamie. You do good work!