I don’t have a problem with democracy. In fact some of my best friends are democrats. I think it’s lovely the way democracy boosts democratic values and nurtures the growth of, uh, good self-esteem. Democracy is so sublimely fart. Fair! I meant fair! (It’s just that the text on the teleprompter is so fine and you must admit that the eye-holes in this plastic bag are pretty tiny. Has my lawyer arrived yet? Can I have some water now?)
Everyone’s a democrat nowadays — or at least insisting on the rights, protection and free wads of cash doled out to democrats. They espouse liberty, equality and fraternity from every camouflaged leech-infested jungle arsenal, from every gilded pleasure-palace along the Euphrates or Nile or Indus: the ultra-Maoist who was nine when he heard in a dream the voice of the Great Leader, ordering him to leave school and become a liberator of his people, and to shoot them if they weren’t as keen on their liberation as he was; the clinically depressed nihilist in his Boston basement who can’t muster the energy to build a bomb big enough to fulfil his implosion fantasy; the riot policeman in Korea, belabouring the Pate of Chaos with the Baton of Democracy; all make their shaky X these days.
But democracy can go horribly wrong, and one need look no further than the World Cup in Australia for graphic evidence of this. Because somewhere along the line somebody clearly thought it a good idea to hand over two vital elements of the game to a democratically elected committee, a gathering of enfranchised nitwits. One refers, naturally, to the hatchet jobs done on the grand traditions of rugby jerseys and national anthems.
Nike, that purveyor of pseudo- joyful uniformity, apparently looking for its inspiration to Australian films like Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and Strictly Ballroom, has attempted to lead the old-fashioned rugby jersey away from its colonial and elitist past and towards a minimalist, democratic and infinitely dim future: gone are the cotton collars of oppression with their connotations of chain gangs and plantations in the Carolinas; gone is the generous fit, oozing with decadence and a lack of transparency about the fitness levels of the player underneath its obscuring and corrupting folds.
It’s all lovely in theory, clean lines and washboard stomachs outlined for the cameras. But last weekend’s game at Perth, where both teams wore the new outfits, was less a rugby match than a brawl between extras in Flash Gordon, especially after the fabric (apparently made from cobwebs and wet loo paper) began parting company with the players.
At least the likes of Georgia and Samoa haven’t sold out to the swoosh of glam couture: there’s nothing like a meaty Polynesian fist closing about a grubby collar and giving it a spine-snapping wrench to remind one why one loves this game.
Remnants of the great jersey may remain in the tournament, but alas the anthems have been well and truly sold down the river of kitsch-by-committee. National anthems are one of the last magnificent survivors of the age of unbridled homicidal nationalism. They ring with heroism, murder most gallant and intoxicating, and the unrepentant self-assuredness that made Biggles the greatest pilot the world has known. They are exhilarating dinosaurs, and it is no coincidence that the two least politically correct anthems — Deutschland Uber Alles and the Die Stem section of the South African medley — have the finest melodies in the whole cacophony of anthemdom.
But most importantly they are designed to arouse, and nothing could assure flaccid frigidity more effectively than handing these little musical firecrackers over to an Australian committee: a country that still fails to embrace Waltzing Matilda as a national anthem should be banned from tampering with music or trying to produce its own.
And so we continue to listen to introspective a-capella anthems, the blood-and-glory harmonies turned into the angsty murmuring of a teenage girl’s yearning to be liked. Damn The Torpedoes, Full Steam Ahead becomes Gee, I wonder if he’s a good kisser? And worst of all, with all the cadenzas and syncopations, nobody knows when to sing and when to shut up. If democracy is this muck, I’ll take authoritarianism, policed by some decisive tubas and an all-seeing kettledrum.