Gnarr (5 page)

Despite these circumstances, something new
opened up for me. A fellow director wanted to bring me in on a sketch show. I said yes, and we started talking over the new project. And that’s where the idea for the Best Party first appeared. I had invented a character for this sketch show, a simple-minded local politician with an autocratic demeanor and completely absurd campaign promises. His motto and party logo was “Thumbs up!” He himself was an odd mixture of Groucho Marx, Tony Blair, and an American used car salesman. I experimented with sayings such as “Anything and everything for our underdogs!” or “All kinds of the best of everything!” and called the party for which he was a candidate
Besti flokkurinn
—The Best Party: “Why choose second best when you can have The Best?”

I invented other slogans of the same kind, the dumber and flatter, the better. At first we had a few other ideas on our list, but they got dropped pretty quickly. In between, I slipped into the role of the politician, intoned a few silly slogans and put on a stupid fixed grin. The idea never bore fruit, however, and with good reason. Once the protest demonstrations in front of the Althingi had become a daily ritual, we saw that it wasn’t the time to palm this particular story off on a television station.

In those days we’d always be running into someone who’d lost his job or had to accept a salary cut. Most were burdened with foreign currency loans, which the free fall of the króna had blown into absurd sums. All
these people woke up one fine morning to find that their debt had increased a hundredfold. The mood of anger and insecurity gave me and many others quite a few sleepless nights. How could it be that a whole class of society had kept a lookout for their own profit alone and persuaded the politicians to inflate that profit more and more? Up until then, in my view, all politicians were pretty much the same, a few alcoholics here and troublemakers there, like everywhere else, but by and large decent people, even if not the most stimulating of conversationalists. But that was obviously a huge misunderstanding.

Many of my friends and acquaintances regularly took part in the protest rallies. They met outside Parliament, whistling and roaring and rattling their cooking pots. A police security contingent had encircled the area and had to listen to the demonstrators’ crude insults. I thought this was just incredible. What had the police done to these people? I remembered how many times my father had probably been involved in something similar. This kind of popular anger pissed me off. When the angry masses attacked Prime Minister Geir Haarde’s car with fists and stones, while the prime minister crouched behind his car looking terrified, I felt really sorry for him.

I myself never took an active part in the protests. If I occasionally mingled with the demonstrators, it was less to make a statement than simply to be there. There was quite a special mood at the time, and quite
a special rhythm. Then, one day, I had to watch as the furious masses invaded a café to disrupt the live recording of a New Year’s Eve broadcast. At that moment, I’d finally had enough, and my attitude towards the saucepan revolution took a sudden turn. The journalists present were all more or less friends of mine, people with whom I’d worked for twenty years. When I saw their frightened eyes, the anger and rage inside of me grew. Suddenly, I just wanted to get away, away from this whole mess. I buried myself for hours and days on end in the Internet and tried to read up on the business and financial world. But the more I read, the less I understood.

In the advertising agency, I’d devised a complete corporate design for the Icelandic telecommunications giant Síminn. One of our biggest customers was the Kaupthing Bank, for which I had once written a commercial. At that time, the agency had even sent me to L.A. to do an interview with John Cleese of
Monty Python
, who was slated for the lead role. John Cleese was my childhood hero, but sitting opposite him, I realized that I too was basically nothing more than a cog in this giant machine. I worked for the advertising guys because they paid well. A commercial for Síminn was more expensive than a complete comedy series that I was filming. What the hell was actually going on in this country?

Do you have to understand something down to the last detail before you can contribute to it? Do you have to be a scientist to become interested in science? Do you have to know everything about nature to take pleasure in it? No. And it’s no different with politics. You don’t need to be a politician to have the right to participate in political life. You don’t need special training or any special skills. You don’t even need to be able to get on well with other people. Each of us has the right to become involved in politics just because we feel like it. If I book a trip to Rome, I don’t have to know everything about the history of Italy or the culture of the ancient Romans. I can just go there to enjoy the beautiful weather.

I’m often asked whether being mayor is difficult. The question shows the kind of image we have of politics and politicians—and thus how easily we fall into a vicious circle: Politics is difficult and therefore only certain people can be politicians. People who can think fast and talk fast, people who are robust and can stand the heat. A bit like superheroes. The ideal politician has
everything under control, is never at a loss for an answer, and shows foresight, determination, and know-how. No matter how much the media are sniffing around him, he always remains cool. There is nothing he doesn’t know or understand, he never bursts into tears and never has any doubts. Unfortunately, he has hardly any human traits either.

Why have our politicians turned out like that? Who made them this way? The answer is: We did. All of us. We have neglected democracy, we haven’t been paying attention and in some ways we’ve let ourselves get taken for a ride. Only a hair-thin line runs between the worlds of finance and politics. In the financial market, people are considered resources; in other words, the financial moguls have simply bought up the politicians. An investment like any other. Donors with money to burn invest in parties and politicians.

Experts and professionals are good and important, but they shouldn’t be overestimated. We can’t leave the schools to teachers, we can’t leave science to scientists, and we can’t leave democracy to politicians. We’re so focused exclusively on success that we’ve forgotten how to enjoy things. And that’s understandable. We live in an extremely success-oriented society. We want success in our professions, we want success for our children at school, and we want to learn about the successes of our government in the media. But success has its price. That price, in part, is joy in life. Because ultimate success does not exist. There’s always a bit
more to do. You need to go ever higher, faster, further, better. Success is easily addictive. As the saying goes: “For the alcoholic, one glass is too much and a hundred glasses are not enough.” Man has flown to the moon—a decisive step, to be sure. But once he was up there, he made a disturbing discovery: there was nothing to do. That’s why nobody’s been back to the moon. Now they want to send a manned spacecraft to Mars, and there’s nothing wrong with that either, as long as it’s fun. As soon as something is no longer fun, it’s worthless, pointless, and sick.

If someone gives you a brand new iPhone, you’re happy of course, and that happiness lasts maybe a few days. But after a month, the phone is no longer quite so new, and eventually, when it breaks down, the happiness evaporates. But the person who gave you the iPhone is happy for maybe years to come. Because he’s one of the good guys, and has given something. And that makes him proud and glad. The same is true for active participation in a democracy. It is high time that we get involved, not because we’re obsessed with success—but because we want to have fun.

The political arena is a tough place. Success is based mainly on quick wit, charisma, and tricks. Rough-and-tumble is de rigueur on the political stage. On television we get to see the banter of parliamentarians every day, and we experience firsthand how they finish each other off. We see how a politician, even when he’s just getting out of his car, is besieged by a horde of
journalists and bombarded with questions—which he breathlessly answers. It’s also a popular ploy, obviously, to trap the politician after a long and tiring session and to force him to give an interview.

What halfway sensible young man is so fascinated by the TV news that he thinks to himself, “Hey, great, I’d like to do something like that! I’ll go into politics”? Surely very few. After all, most politicians don’t cut a particularly sympathetic figure. Those who advocate a better society and want only the best for its citizens are just wimps. But should the slightest suspicion arise that they might have skeletons in their closet, people start pointing a finger of accusation. And not everyone is made to survive in such a world. This in turn has the consequence that when we hear the phrase “professional politician” these days, we usually imagine a skilled, well-trained expert.

Although this “profession” requires no special training, it does require special qualities. The professional politician is, as I said, a lightning-fast thinker with robust self-confidence and an answer to everything. Glimmers of humor can’t hurt him so long as he uses them to pull one over on his opponents. In politics, a sharp wind blows, and only a few can stick it out. Here it’s the typical male characteristics and values that are needed, which is why it’s not surprising that female politicians often adopt a somewhat masculine persona.

If we want to change politics, we need to change
this entire frame of mind, to rethink what is really required to be a politician. To save democracy, politics must attract a wider range of people. We need scientists. We need artists. We need quite ordinary people who think slowly instead of quickly. People who admit it when they don’t know something, instead of pretending they know everything so they won’t be ousted from their jobs. We need shy people. We need the overweight, the stutterers, and the disabled. Punks, bakers, and manual workers. And above all, we need young people. We must make our politics more interesting, exciting, and cool, so that everyone will feel like getting involved.

After all, politicians are no different from the rest of the population. Strictly speaking, a politician is nothing more than a baker. There are good and less good bakers. Some are quite excellent bakers, others get nothing baked. The vast majority lie somewhere in between. Middling bakers, as it were.

In interviews I always arouse irritation when I openly admit that I don’t know something. Or when I turn my interviewers’ words against them. Sometimes I turn up at official occasions in drag or some such outfit. This too sometimes creates a bad impression, as it stirs up the suspicion that I lack seriousness. But it’s just the opposite: I take my job very seriously, and am just trying to turn it into something a bit more entertaining. This is my way of standing up for the changes that I think necessary.

It’s sometimes happened that a journalist interviewing me has been left helpless with laughter at my answers. In the TV news, that kind of thing obviously gets cut. News is a deadly serious affair—a phenomenon, by the way, that’s not limited to politics. News programs are usually nothing more than a succession of horrors. It often reminds me of a church service, a deadly serious ceremony, which always follows the same pattern.

Jón Gnarr wrote the party program to inaugurate the Best Party website in January 2010
.

Our party program combines the highlights of all the other parties’ programs. We rely primarily on concepts that have proven themselves in the welfare states of northern Europe. That sounds pretty good when you first hear it. Both the state-controlled planned economy with its paternalism, and the laissez-faire and market ethos of neoliberalism have failed, while societies that embody an active democracy seem to be quite resilient. In welfare states, social justice is much better developed than elsewhere, even with an extremely competitive job market. This is a good thing. We Icelanders have over the years moved increasingly away from the line followed by the Scandinavian welfare states and we must now pay the bitter price. The economic crisis has hit us particularly hard and meant the crash was deeper for us than it was for most of our neighbors. Unfortunately, the mood in the country is correspondingly lousy. That’s why the Best Party now really has to roll up its sleeves and be a model of
reconstruction, economic stability, social justice, and a better standard of living, a torchbearer to free us from the dark ages and lead us into a better future. We want to maintain freedom of trade and an open, non-state-controlled economic order.

To be honest: We don’t have any party program of our own. But we still act as if we did.

The Best Party is a liberal, rock-solid party with a Scandinavian twist. We want to tackle the urgent problems that affect us all and set in motion far-reaching social reforms, operating with the necessary farsightedness and not neglecting social justice. We defend the systematic statehood and economic and cultural independence of Iceland, including its parliamentary democracy and its legal system. Citizens are being extremely cautious these days. That is understandable. For us, individual human beings are paramount, and by that we mean women as well as men. We don’t think that women are naive fools who only come out with trivial crap, but serious people who have something to say: their voices must be heard. Therefore, we want to open a women’s cafe, where women can indulge in every imaginable specialty coffee, in flavors such as vanilla or cinnamon, while chatting away to their hearts’ content and slagging off whoever and whatever they want—and every word will be recorded and carefully archived. We’ll also arrange mystery tours for our grandmothers and grandfathers.

As a transparent, democratic reform party we are
also planning to set up an Ideas Bank, a Sustainability Center as we shall call it, to provide citizens with a forum where they can present their ideas for the future and give them a transparent environment for discussion. The best ideas will be rewarded with a solemnly conferred special prize, also favoring sustainability. (For example, how about training the whales and fish off the Icelandic coasts?)