{"id":513,"date":"2010-04-28T12:46:48","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T12:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/04\/gillian-duffy-the-new-susan-boyle.html"},"modified":"2010-04-28T12:46:48","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T12:46:48","slug":"gillian-duffy-the-new-susan-boyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/04\/gillian-duffy-the-new-susan-boyle.html","title":{"rendered":"Gillian Duffy: The new Susan Boyle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meet Gillian Duffy, a genial grandmother who is quickly becoming a British media sensation, thanks to PM Gordon Brown&#8217;s being nice to her face, then calling her a &#8220;bigot&#8221; behind her back &#8212; forgetting that he was wearing a live mike. Thanks to electronic media, including the power of YouTube, the PM has just committed political suicide. A gaffe like this is astonishing &#8212; and a real pop-culture media moment for the ages:<object width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/14f3aOC929w&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xd0d0d0&#038;hl=en_US&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/14f3aOC929w&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xd0d0d0&#038;hl=en_US&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowScriptAccess=\"always\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><\/embed><\/object><b>UPDATE:<\/b> I should add that as entertaining as this sort of thing is, I do feel sorry for politicians and other famous people, who always, always, always have to assume that they&#8217;re &#8220;on.&#8221; Can you imagine having to live as if there were constantly a microphone around, recording your words? I actually <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/crunchycon\/2008\/07\/jesse-jacksons-big-mouth.html\">defended Jesse Jackson on this point <\/a>when a hot mike caught him saying some discreditable things about Barack Obama. What he said was awful, and I wasn&#8217;t sorry to see him suffer for it. But it&#8217;s still queasy-making, I think, the way we all hover around, waiting for somebody famous to say something stupid, and then blow it up. Which, come to think of it, is what I&#8217;m doing with this blog entry. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet Gillian Duffy, a genial grandmother who is quickly becoming a British media sensation, thanks to PM Gordon Brown&#8217;s being nice to her face, then calling her a &#8220;bigot&#8221; behind her back &#8212; forgetting that he was wearing a live mike. Thanks to electronic media, including the power of YouTube, the PM has just committed&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Gillian Duffy: The new Susan Boyle - Rod Dreher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/04\/gillian-duffy-the-new-susan-boyle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gillian Duffy: The new Susan Boyle - Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Meet Gillian Duffy, a genial grandmother who is quickly becoming a British media sensation, thanks to PM Gordon Brown&#8217;s being nice to her face, then calling her a &#8220;bigot&#8221; behind her back &#8212; forgetting that he was wearing a live mike. Thanks to electronic media, including the power of YouTube, the PM has just committed&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/04\/gillian-duffy-the-new-susan-boyle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-28T12:46:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Gillian Duffy: The new Susan Boyle - Rod Dreher","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/04\/gillian-duffy-the-new-susan-boyle.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Gillian Duffy: The new Susan Boyle - Rod Dreher","og_description":"Meet Gillian Duffy, a genial grandmother who is quickly becoming a British media sensation, thanks to PM Gordon Brown&#8217;s being nice to her face, then calling her a &#8220;bigot&#8221; behind her back &#8212; forgetting that he was wearing a live mike. 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