“Perhaps the maddest of his schemes was that, when he had been made the Premier, he would choose educated people to be his Ministers, just as one chooses a trained dentist to pull one’s teeth instead of going to the nearest quack at a street corner who likes to scream from the top of a tub that he ‘opposes toothache’. The Professor was silly enough to think that if doctors had to pass examinations before they could cut out his appendix, then Members of Parliament ought to pass examinations before they could rule his life.” - T.H. White,>Mistress Masham’s Repose B>“I came from the people, they need to adore me/

So Christian Dior me from my head to my toes/

I need to be dazzling, I want to be Rainbow High/

They must have excitement, and so must I” -Tim RiEvita

EXPRESSING even the mildest misgivings about the direction this Government is taking is viewed as a well-nigh indictable offence in certain quarters. Criticism probably would be declared illegal if the reliably officious David Burch had his way. The Housing Minister recently wished out loud that he could arrest his Shadow counterpart for highlighting the predicament of Bermudians living in the deteriorating shell of a long-closed hotel.In time-honoured Bermuda fashion, he opted to browbeat the messenger rather than address the grim fact a growing homeless population seeking refuge in derelict buildings hardly augurs well for the future of a society where the rich are getting inordinately richer and the poor are getting increasingly marginalised. And restless.

But if challenging the Housing Minister is a borderline crime, questioning the Premier is judged to be high treason.

It’s on a level with admitting you think wrapping the Bermuda flag and $11 million in a no-hope cricket team was not the wisest possible exercise in nation-building, what with a 50 percent failure rate in the public schools to worry about. It’s up there with expressing scepticism about motherhood even given such dubious role models as Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears. It’s a slur on the dignity of the nation akin to stating for the record you think Cassava pie actually tastes like warmed-over wood shavings.

Second guessing the Premier, in the current overheated pre-election atmosphere, is considered downright unBermudian, folks.

It’s also potentially hazardous for your health.

Anyone not rushing to bask in his reflected glory risks being trampled in the mad stampede of true believers and one-time Progressive Labour Party fence-sitters who have had epiphany-conversions since the polished Dr. Brown completed the stalled power grab he began in 2003 and ousted his lacklustre predecessor last October.

Also to be found in the heaving throng making its way to the Cabinet Office front door are self-interested fellow travellers from the Bermuda business community who believe, probably correctly, that swearing a blood oath to the new Premier, kissing his ring and running for public office under his banner will greatly enhance their prospects when it comes time to disburse the Goverment contracts. And don’t overlook the off-shore corporate chieftains out to buy political access and work permit extensions as well as the carpet-bagging overseas consultants and contractors out to buy Bermuda. Even a faded movie star who isn’t entirely Bermudian plays one on TV, graciously accepting second-billing to the Premier at his staged media events.

Everyone wants to back a winner and Dr. Brown, riding the crest a tsunami of uncritically slavish media coverage and unprecedentedly extravagant hype, is positioning himself in the public eye as just that.

Naysayers are banished, sometimes quite literally. Charismatic authority, it seems, sometimes leads to ugly streaks of charismatic authoritarianism.

If you’re a guest worker, making a tasteless joke within hearing distance of one of the Premier’s more earnest supporters is sufficient to earn you a police jacket as a perpertrator of “terrorist threats” and a one-way ticket back to your country of origin.

If you’re a Bermudian, you’re bounced from the chair of an environmental round table for pointing out those three eardrum-shattering blasts heard around the island were the Sustainable Development Policy, the Bermuda Plan and the City of Hamilton Plan all breaking the sound barrier as they flew towards the garbage can at supersonic speeds directly Dr. Brown took office.

Pity, then, the poor wretch who volunteers to take on the role of lackey in this unending triumphal parade, joining Dr. Brown in his chariot as he reviews ranks of prostrate admirers and whispers in his ear, “Fame, too, fades”. These are not words either he or his more zealous admirers want to hear. But, what the hell, someone has to drizzle on his parade.

Dr. Brown, “Doc Hollywood”, is acutely intelligent, seems to boast more professional and academic qualifications than entire graduating classes at some mid-sized universities and has undeniable charismatic appeal.

Beyond that it’s not at all clear what he has in terms of an overall political vision or a coherent agenda.

Occasional rapid-fire bursts of antique Black Nationalist rhetoric (the whole “I wouldn’t call him a racist dog ...” shtick was old when Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor were still working the chitlin’ circuit) are interspersed with conservative views that could win him a commentator’s spot on the Fox News Network (although his disdain for welfare hasn’t stopped him from placing his bloated retinue on the public payroll).

He’s revived the prospects of Independence while simultaneously launching a pre-emptive charm offensive intended to convince the off-shore financial services sector - rightly terrified by his precessor’s dangerously frivolous views on this most important and irreversible constitutional step - he’s a man with whom they can indeed do business.

And his well-known taste for high-living has not prevented Dr. Brown and his allies from positioning him as a man of the people, a “son of the soil” in the words of that grindingly hackneyed phrase, despite the fact appearances would suggest he’s actually only a man of the Top People (the increasingly notorious “FOEs” - “Friends of Ewart”).

Put him in a gilt-edged frame, hang him in the Bermuda National Gallery and you’d have one of those enigmatic modern art masterpieces the critics and lay people could puzzle over for generations, never quite pinning down what he actually represents.

Dr. Brown and his handlers seem to be aware of these multiple and conflicting interpretations, the inability to easily reconcile, say, the closing of a well-regarded public health clinic with his avowed intent to create a private hospital in Bermuda.

So he’s being packaged for the forthcoming election as a type of secular messiah, allowing him to detour around all of these inconsistencies and avoid potentially awkward questions by dint of his supposedly inviolate nature.

Dr. Brown as the Anointed One is a bit of stretch, of course. Some in his own party who have found carving knives from his chopping block buried to the hilts in the smalls of their backs would certainly beg to differ with such a grandiose characterisation. While the PLP has pulled the black-out curtains over the windows at Alaska Hall since Dr. Brown’s ascension, it’s no secret the internal feuding and factionalism did not end with the ouster of Alex Scott. Far from it.

But Dr. Brown knows what his opponents do not — that, in the short-term, the single uplifting myth is far more potent than a thousand depressing truths. That’s his entire election strategy in a nutshell.

Never mind it’s a stratagem redolent with contrivance and calculation. It’s purpose - to manufacture an air of inevitablity, unstoppable momentum - may well be successful and win him the electoral mandate he craves.

No one disputes the Premier’s singular abilty to lay on the charm with a trowel, a shovel or even a payloader when necessary. No one disputes his cross-cultural appeal. His apostles are the strangest of political bedfellows.<\p>They range from grassroots zeas to uber-rich types, those allergic to income taxes in their native countries who have relocated here for their fiscal health. The former are taken with his sometimes shrill nationalist tub-thumping, the latter with his free wheeling views on the free market. People want to believe in him.

But unless he begins to deal in specifics rather than beautifully gift-wrapped generalities, unless he recognises that even the most dazzling glamour is no substitute for roofs over the heads of the homeless or schools that produce literate children, the Premier is going to discover just how transient political fame can be.

David Burch and his Premier have few commonalities except for a shared habit of barking “Off with their heads!” at anyone who dares intrude on the trouble-free personal comfort zones they have created for themselves. In their very different ways,both men are closing their eyes to aspects of the real world they would rather not confront. And reality cannot long go denied. For reality, by definition, is that which refuses to go away even when you don’t believe in it. - Tim Hodgson