Naughty, naughty, naughty.

Is a cigar really just a cigar?

Every now and then, a respected member of the ruling classes (if the Senate passes the Order of Precedence Bill, 2015, I want there to be a record of respect for those people on this blog) ends up on the front pages of the dailies. Every now and then the inches of newsprint is not laudatory because that respected member of the ruling classes is usually being accused of something very bad in relation to an innocent's naughty place, to put it as coyly and delicately as possible.

A respected business leader who became a political leader struck another respected leader in the face because he feared for the safety of his naughty place. Another respected leader who joined the ranks recently obsessed endlessly online and on air about a certain leader's naughty place, placing great stock in biblical received wisdom that linked leadership with a certain surgical procedure, not to put too fine a point to it. 

When the Security Laws (Amendments) Bill, 2014, was passed by the National Assembly, a fracas ensued, and a respected member of the ruling classes accused some of her colleagues of extremely ungentlemanly behaviour. She was so incensed by their attempts to catch a glimpse of her naughty places, she partially disrobed in their presence. Now another of her colleagues has been accused of violently interfering with another respected leader's naughty place. What is the respected leadership of this country coming to?

This obsession with the naughty places of others' by the respected ruling classes has a rather short and sordid history. The match was set to the tinder when a novice member of the elected classes made what has become the obsession of the aforementioned respected leader obsessed with the link between leadership and a certain surgical procedure. It may be coincidence, but the former novice and the newly obsessed one come from the same neck of the woods, but it is no longer happenstance when both wonder publicly and loudly whether another older member of the respected ruling classes  has undergone a surgical procedure that is very, very private.

We have Americanised public life and public discourse. Our obsessions with salaciousness encourage those who would rule us to ever greater attempts at public notoriety. Hush-hush rumours of their infidelities and peccadilloes now consume a greater portion of the national conversation than, say, the rising death toll in Mandera and Lamu or the out-of-control public debt. Our lives are now enriched by sordid tales that have little to do with public policy; instead of asking why this is so, we are begging for more of the same. We can't get enough of these new obsessions by the respected ruling classes. And our fearless media, where the respected press goes to die, keeps selling us the same salacious sordidness. In the end, it seems, we all want to be entertained and sordid tales of naughty things in naughty places by respected ruling classes seem to fit the bill rather nicely.