Moments of Permanence - Testaments to character

From: willow Date: July 11th, 2012 05:31 pm (UTC) (Link)

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 Date: July 12th, 2012 06:19 am (UTC) (Link)

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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