 Testaments to character
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Jul. 11th, 2012 @ 12:44 pm 
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It's perhaps unfortunate that we so rarely see politicians reacting to truly surprising events. It's definitely unfortunate that political campaigning tends to involve so much time spent blowing up every trivial detail into something of allegedly vast magnitude, because doing so drowns out the issues that actually do matter.
Last week, on the live discussion progrm Q&A, one of the panellists, Simon Sheikh, who heads GetUp and is therefore a perennial irritant to pretty much all politicians, collapsed. He's epileptic, and had been fighting flu for a few weeks while still working harder, it turns out, than was advisable for his health; he had a minor seizure, apparently, and definitely passed out, faceplanting on the desk with an audible thud.
The reactions of the two politicians on the panel were notable.
Sophie Mirabella (LIB), who was sitting next to him, recoiled, giving him a horrified look, and stayed leaning away until Sheikh had regained consciousness and been escorted off the stage by crew-type people. When he makes a slight noise, she pulls further away, and shuffles the papers in front of her slightly further away as well. She puts a hand on his shoulder and helps push him up, but that's still moving him further away from her.
Greg Combet (ALP), who was on the other side of the panel and was mid-sentence at the time, said something like: "I don't know what Simon is doing. Is he okay? I think Simon's not okay..."
At that point, the crew members were starting to converge, and the presenter said, "Simon is not okay." At which point Combet stood and went around to where Sheikh was being pulled up to a sitting position. Combet's voice is just audible, as this is happening, saying: "Oh, no." When Sheikh becomes responsive, if a bit waxen, Combet is asking if he's okay. (One of the crew, who clearly knows more about him, can be heard asking if he had a seizure. Sheikh acknowledges a bit glassily that he passed out, and is escorted at that point from the stage. (He was looked after very well, he said later, until the ambulance came to take him to hospital.)
Combet hovers by Sheikh's chair for a moment after Sheikh is taken away, watching a bit anxiously. As Tony Jones starts regaining control of the situation, telling everyone to sit down and leading in for further questions, Combet can be heard saying "Dear oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear." And then he sits down but looks rattled and concerned.
Now, I'm not a huge fan of Combet. He's had a number of policies I profoundly disagree with, and I say this without malice, but he is arguably the dullest speaker currently in Federal Parliament. This man could tell you that you'd won the lottery and also been made the ruler of your own small but wealthy nation, while congratulating you on the birth of your child and finish on a recitation of the band of brothers speech from Henry V, and you would realise around the point of and hold their manhood cheap, your attention caught by the childish entertainment value of "manhood", that you had totally tuned out and missed every word he droned. He lacks charisma so profoundly that if he ever shook hands with someone like Bill Clinton or Robert Downey, Jr., it would produce a reaction that would risk catastrophic damage to the personalities of everyone within a hundred-mile radius. (It's been theorised that this is how Victoria happened.)
However, I would trust him infinitely more than I would Mirabella. I now, until further notice, am convinced that he's not a bad man, just misguided in some of his policies. Whereas Sophie Mirabella is perpetuating the apparent trend that conservative politicians are basically horrible people.
There are more examples of character-demonstrating issues regarding politicians, but I still have the Maybe-Actual-Flu Death Cold of Doom and am out of stamina. Must go collapse.
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| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) willow |
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| Date: |
July 11th, 2012 05:31 pm (UTC) |
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No one really knows how they'll react in a given situation until it happens. It's all instinct and unknown things in the head. But it doesn't come across very well, if an ill person is 'OMG GET AWAY' For whatever reason/trauma/etc.
Especially for a politician.
Your desc makes it seem very much like one person had a human reaction of 'Someone's hurt! Oh dear! What do we do?! Will they be ok?!'
And another person going 'OMG, is he gonna get sick on me? Ewh?!'
And it might be distance playing into things, or personalities, or again, unconscious stuff. But yeah, it doesn't sound at all like it looked very good.
It sounds worse, actually, if it's known the person who fainted is epileptic.
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| From: | sami |
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| Date: |
July 12th, 2012 06:19 am (UTC) |
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Chas pointed out that it's *possible* she's not a horrible person, just *really* bad in a crisis, or anything remotely resembling one.
Personalities only forgives so much, since Simon Sheikh is a perfectly nice guy, and from a politics perspective, he annoys the hell out of pretty much all politicians, and Combet has been personally beset by Sheikh and the forces GetUp marshall more than once.
I don't know whether Mirabella knew that Sheikh is epileptic. It's clear that the studio crew were aware, but he might make more of a point of letting the studios hosting him know in case something does happen. (It is the obvious thing for someone with epilepsy to do, Just In Case. Studio lights etc can make a situation physically stressful even for someone who's otherwise healthy, let alone someone who's been fighting off flu for weeks and is, it turns out, dangerously exhausted.)
If he's made a point of telling the studio, then whoever's keeping an eye on health and safety issues is going to have that on their list of things to be aware of. Otherwise he doesn't make a huge deal of it, because he isn't really famous as himself - he doesn't glorify himself out of the work his organisation does, so his personal biography and so on isn't that high profile.
But yes. Greg Combet very clearly had a reaction of: "That man is not okay. Can I help? What do we need to do about this?" He looked rattled and a little upset when he sat down again even though Sheikh was being escorted by about four very concerned people, so the odds that he'd collapse and not be taken care of were pretty much nonexistent. The host, who's generally pretty good at reading people, didn't ask him to pick up where he'd left off in the answer he'd been giving, but moved on firmly, drawing attention away from Combet as well as away from Sheikh.
Mirabella, however, gave off a strong air of: "What is this? There's something wrong with him. Get it away from me." The kindest interpretation remains that she is not someone you want to be relying on in any kind of crisis, and *definitely* not in a medical emergency. (Whereas Combet could probably be relied upon to be concerned, and call an ambulance.)
None of it had anything to do with politics, but at the same time, things that demonstrate a person's character do, to me, matter when it comes to politicians. Because if someone is in a position where they're making important decisions about other people's lives, I think it matters whether that person is a compassionate person, who's going to care, or... not.
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