Why people don't like politics: Object Lesson I

There's been one of those "human interest" stories running on and off in the past few days about "Big Brother" the tv show... it's been about how one of the... what are they called? One of the housemates (I nearly said inmates) of the house is apparently a Young Liberal, and apparently there was a concerted campaign by Young Libs to prevent her from being kicked out of the house in the first week, in response to which some Young Labor people got up a campaign to get her voted out of the house. There was a short thing on 3LO this afternoon about how the "Young Labor" people were victorious because Katrina (the name of the Young Lib) had been kicked out, blah blah blah...

Bullshit.

This is exactly the sort of behaviour which makes people cynical about politics. Side A "stacks" the phone lines in order to make sure that one of their 'own' stay in the contest, and Side B respond by doing likewise. Neither group pays any attention to the considerations of merit, or the spirit in which the game is played. All that matters is that one's own side wins and the other side loses - whether that is a 'good' outcome in the general scheme of the things doesn't come into it at all.

I'm not trying to say that I particularly wanted her to stay... nor that I think that it's a particularly big problem that either side got 'their people' to vote lots of times in order to rig the result. It's a game show, and let's face, those things tend to be rigged anyway. Frankly, I don't give a toss who stays in the Big Brother household and who doesn't, and as I've mentioned in an earlier entry, I hate those types of shows anyway.

But this just seems, to me, to be symptomatic of some of the problems inherent in our current system of politics - which is that very little, if anything, is done on the basis of merit, and everything on the basis of who your friends are. Let's face it, it's a problem in wider society anyway - who doesn't know of instances where favouritism was shown? Even the concept of 'networking' plays up to this sort of nepotism (in the broader sense of the word) - the idea that it's who you know, rather than what you know, that's important. Furthermore, it also demonstrates and supports that sense of cynicism people have regarding the way political parties 'rig' results to suit themselves - so that the outcome might suit Side A or Side B, but it never ends up suiting the public.

From my point of view, on the basis of the little I've heard through the media, this girl was unpopular with the wider public anyway because she was full of herself, arrogant and treated the other housemates with disrespect. That's why the housemates nominated her as one of the possible evictees, after all. If anything, that was why she should have been voted off - not because of some petty and stupid battle between two groups of people who surely have better things to do with their time than make dozens of phone calls about such a trivial issue.

I mean, really. Get a life, guys.