Sunday Times 2
The two-week attention span: Simply politricks
View(s):“You know, Silva” observed my old friend and former journalist colleague Kamal “most of our readers only remember things for two weeks”. He took another sip of his drink while I waited for him to elaborate.
“You see,” he went on, “the headlines that grab our attention today, the attention-catching news items that influence the conversations and chattering of most people, will be forgotten in a fortnight. This simple fact is what successful politicians are well aware of — and they exploit it to the full. If the people are starting to think and talk about something that is a little too close to these politicians’ skeleton-filled cupboards, they just change the conversation by planting some new topic that they know will grab the attention of the people. The serious matter which these politicians are worried that right-minded people would talk about and act upon is then pushed off the radar”.
“Just as an example, Silva, can YOU remember what was grabbing the headlines two weeks ago?”
He paused awhile for his challenge to sink in. I certainly was not in a position to disagree with him.
“Just take this mad fellow Trump” Kamal went on, warming to his subject “Only the other day he was in deep hot water after he returned from his meeting with Putin in Finland. His own party people and ‘support-kaarayas’ were all finding fault with him for contradicting the evidence provided by his own intelligence services like the FBI and for cuddling up to America’s bogeyman Putin. Trump even had to uncomfortably read from a script that had been written for him and confess that he had “mis-spoken” – and had actually said the opposite of what he actually wanted to say at the Putin news conference. Of course anybody who saw him speak at that press conference had no doubt as to what his demeanour and body language was saying.
“To compound Trump’s difficult situation, evidence had just come out that he had lied about paying hush money to a former Playboy model to cover up the affair he was having with her while he was still married to his present wife.”
“When he is wondering how to get out of this quagmire, along comes the Iranian president Rouhani issuing a warning to him not to mess with the Lion that is Iran. What does Trump do? He uses Twitter (oblivious to the fact that Twitter is banned in Iran) to send off a CAPITAL LETTER tweet threatening Iran – like one of our schoolboys threatening another child who annoys him on the playground with “If you come too much I’ll give you tight!”.
“Give the world with its short attention span another few days of tough guy Trump belligerently telling the world “DON’T YOU EVER TRY TO MESS ABOUT WITH GREAT AMERICA” and the world will have forgotten all about Trump’s gaffes in Helsinki and his Playboy affairs.”
“And it is not only American politicians,” Kamal went on, “who capitalise on the fact that world opinion cannot remember things for too long. Even our own politicians here blatantly exploit this tactic of playing to our two week attention span.”
“When the ex-Governor of the Central Bank misused his position to help his son-in-law Arjun Aloysius to profiteer from the nation’s coffers, this was the topic of conversation all over the country — but the people’s attention was quietly diverted by some unrelated attention-grabbing matter. When right thinking citizens were talking about how wrong it was for Ravi Karunanayake’s penthouse rent to be paid by none other than this same Aloysius fellow, something else hit the headlines and Ravi’s disgusting and disgraceful behaviour was forgotten.”
“When the Deputy Chief Priest of the Asgiriya Chapter spoke at Gotabhaya’s birthday, his simplistic utterances monopolised the headlines for a few days – only to be overshadowed by the equally simplistic utterances of Mrs Vijayakala Maheswaran. The huge uproar over her remarks and resignation took centre stage thereby relegating Ven Endaruwe Upali’s “sermon” to the back pages of people’s brains.”
“Politicians do not worry about the major revelations made by us journalists, however well we research our articles and write up our pieces” went on Kamal. “They know that the attention span of the public only lasts a fortnight – and when today’s big story surfaces it will be the subject of conversation and consternation only until something new turns up”
“And something new will invariably crop up, or be conjured up to crop up (it always does) that will turn the attention of the voting people away from these important matters.”
“So ensuring that what grabs the public’s attention in the two or three weeks before they actually go to the ballot box is all that the politicians need to focus on – quite irrespective of all the unholy rackets they get up to in the four or five years before the next election.”
He stopped to take another sip of his drink. I could only look at him and nod in agreement.
What Kamal was saying made perfect sense.