The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray (best biographies to read TXT) 📕

My eyes drifted between the plastic fern and the perpetual custard stain on John’s sleeve. I found the combination strangely provocative, and resolved to tell John to go fuck himself.

‘I won’t do it.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I did not fly 3,000 kilometres for this. I came as a balladeer, John. A troubadour for truth and beauty. That’s why I’m here.’

‘This isn’t Woodstock, son. Now fuck off and somnambulate.’

‘Why are you even here?’ I asked him.

‘To serve the Minister and collect my cheque. Now, I’ll concede that this might not be the job you thought it would be. But it’s the one you fucking have.’

‘That’s it? That’s your Agincourt speech?’

‘I don’t know what this is; now, fuck off and google some Steve Jobs quotes. The Minister loves them.’

But I couldn’t leave. My blood pressure was increasing. I was experiencing intrusive memories of Ms. West and bull fellatio. I think I was hyperventilating, I’m not sure. ‘Let me tell you what’s happened here,’ I said.

‘Oh, please. Enlighten me. I’ve got all fucking day.’

‘The Minister’s adviser is younger than I am, has never built a robot, flown a plane, or managed a tech company,’ I said. ‘And he never will. But occasionally Stanley reads Wired, and when he does he makes sure others see him, because there’s a part of him that’s kinked with doubt. He’s not super bright, but he’s smart enough to occasionally grasp his limitations. But these doubts are mostly forgotten when he goes home to Sydney to visit the family, where they purr over the success of their son and his proximity to power. He revels in this attention, which he repays with political gossip. In this orgy of familial pride, no-one bothers to ask if he is either passionate about or experienced in the areas he is ostensibly there to advise upon.’ John had a look of boredom that I chose to interpret as disguised admiration.

‘Now, Stanley,’ I continued, ‘spends three seconds on a Reddit forum. It’s filled with young men tumescent with the desire to become the next Elon Musk. They have no expertise or attention spans, but they do own weird hats. And our adviser, signed up as Jobs4Life, lurks in the shadows of this thread, scribbling notes and thinking he’s taking the pulse of tech’s avant-garde.’

I thought my jaw might snap — I was really building up some steam now. ‘He’s excited, reckons he can add something usefully exotic to his briefings to the minister. And having fished a few buzzwords and pipe dreams from this excited bilge, Jobs4Life logs off, just before the “conversation” disintegrates into ad hominem and emotional cannibalism. This forum, John, is incredibly volatile — composed of bitter freaks who’ve confused their personality disorders for genius. At this point, injured by the abuse of strangers, young blokes in Jamiroquai hats self-harm in their parents’ basements.

‘Our adviser sees none of this. He’s already gone, thinking he’s glimpsed the zeitgeist, and is now drafting briefing notes. He’s giddy, you know, because he thinks he’s hit upon the solution to his boss’s problem: that the minister knows nothing about either innovation or art, much less automated flight. And so our young man, his self-belief oiled nicely with parental approval, offers to his lord … Robot pilots.’

John leant forward in his chair again to interrupt me, but it was half-hearted.

‘Now, here’s where we come in,’ I continued. ‘We’re asked to reflect — no, formalise — this profound idiocy with a speech.’

‘We do what we’re told to do, or we fuck off,’ John said.

‘Fuck off where?’ I said.

‘Well, in your case, back to the other side of the country.’

He had a point. The department had paid for my airfare, substantial shipping, and a fortnight of serviced accommodation — and my contract stipulated that I was liable for those costs if I didn’t serve at least a year. That was far more money than I had.

‘Robot pilots,’ I said, defeated.

‘At last.’

I walked back to my desk. Susie was polishing the Sex and Out script, which meant removing all my changes. Archibald was reading St. Augustine’s Confessions.

I googled ‘inspirational Steve Jobs quotes’. The minister’s office had a fixation with the guy. Saw him as universal shorthand for innovation, even though the witless regurgitation of his quotes was the opposite of ingenuity. This habit demoralised the policy teams of the department — members of which had never built a robot, flown a plane or managed a tech company either — but who could at least offer more sophisticated references than the minister’s teenage advisers. But the policy teams were ignored, in favour of endless citations of Steve Jobs.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me. Sure, fine.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. Precisely. And we, the government, would demonstrate both innovation and leadership by blithely copying the words of a man who would despise us.

But I was now realising that there was a similarity between Jobs and this government, as my notions of the Mandarin Priest were exposed as sweet and childish fantasy. Like our new Prime Minister, the Apple guru’s ambition was dark and irritable. In glorifying treatments of Jobs, his drive is accepted as some beatific abstraction — something rare and beautiful, to be thoughtlessly revered like the sun or Justin Timberlake — rather than the product of a fevered vanity. Jobs changed the world; he was also cruel and deceitful, and his clichéd pronouncements on innovation masked the more interesting origins of his brilliance.

I could now see that the Prime Minister also concealed himself with platitudes. Jargon was a kind of camouflage. A way of suggesting benevolent superiority — a dull and wonkish dependability — when in truth his ambition was governed by rage. While old grievances spurred him, technocratic pieties disfigured his speeches and paranoia shrank his cabinet. ‘I guess what I want to say to you, mate,’ he’d say, ‘is