Overseas readers of Fryday will not be aware that Auckland’s newly re-elected mayor is embroiled in a sex scandal. The revelation that he had a two year affair with a young woman who at times was contracted to council in a number of capacities was made public only after the mayor, Len Brown, was re-elected. Some say the timing was significant, and perhaps it is; perhaps that timing may be indeed the greater issue and concern in this affair. Certainly, if I were still in politics I would be more concerned with that than making judgements on the mayoral morality. In truth though I have no real concerns and only a prurient interest. Mayor Brown has himself to blame, he has made his own bed—or more accurately in this case a couch—and he has to lie in it and hopefully not lie about it. This story will take its course and doesn’t need me to push it along. But where are the jokes? They are curiously absent. Usually in cases such as this the jokes about a celebrity’s indiscretions come thick and fast (and I apologise for that terminology). They are often cruel and always humiliating, which can be a potent weapon. Shane Jones seems to be the only politician to fully survive such an attack. But here with Mayor Brown the satirical sword remains sheathed. The only joke I have read is the predictable Fifty Shades of Brown. And therein may lay a clue. Fifty Shades of Grey could more accurately describe Mayor Brown with or without the BDSM connotations. In his performance and his engagements and in his interface he has exhibited only grey—neutral, unprepossessing, unexciting. I once heard grey described as the colour black would be if it would only lighten up, and Mayor Brown has at least attained that. But he has never been interesting, much less charismatic, which is perhaps why our humourists and satirists are struggling to come up with anything funny to say about this issue. There is nothing to latch on to. In the end Mr Brown’s very greyness may be the very Teflon-coating that saves him.
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