Graceland, Legends And The Art Of Rhetoric

So it begins: the shrill squawking of ministerial promises blaring from loud hailers easing down my street, the lightning-strike posters nailed to longsuffering lamposts -- they're everywhere, and they make me giggle because they remind me far too much of Elvis Presley's once-famous Taking Care of Business in a Flash logo.








Yet, clearly, I don't live in Graceland.

Here, the weather is always the same -- it's the tropics, after all. The malls are evenly air-conditioned -- just cool enough to make you browse -- though the prices can get too hot to handle. Public transport runs like clockwork and the airport is something of a legend in itself. The radio stations play a maddening mix of banal non-sequiturs; all imported from sophisticated countries where it is perfectly acceptable for people to call glutes "all that junk inside your trunk" and "gedwidchu" expresses a desire for sex.

But 14 years since I went walking in Memphis as a chubby youngster in search of my next great beignet, I will even take an event as farcical as a general election -- in which choice is a notion best pegged to a legend called Hobson -- as surely better than the default setting where there is no there: a lugubrious mediocrity that lingers in the air we breathe.

Here, nature truly favours the mediocre, and all things fair to middling. Each night, despite the odds, the mildly-depressed-for-no-good-reason, the dour and the happy-only-when-compared-to-utter devastation -- they all will sing with feeling the lyrics of disco diva legend Gloria Gaynor: "I will survive. Yes, I'll survive."

And, in case you missed it, "I will survive."

Now, I know I surely don't live in Graceland.

But there sure are a lot of people here who are getting freakily excited about the king, the one whose electoral blue suede shoes are best not stepped on. The one some call the son, the one they say might do greater deeds than his father, the one my mother describes (with the displaced affection of a die-hard rock fan) "rather dashing in an Asian-George Clooney kind of way if you look at him from the side ...".

Still, I wonder if Western rules of engagement apply to politicians in my clean-and-very-green neighbourhood which I honour and I adore.

For instance:
1. Do fortune, and voters, favour just the tall -- or also the relatively tall?
2. Just how effectively can a candidate apply the actions of loosening a tie and rolling up sleeves when it is di rigeur to wear polo T-shirts with short sleeves?
3. How far does a spouse's sense of style affect a candidate's popularity?
4. Do the partying habits of a candidate's children make a difference?
5. Does the shade of white worn by a candidate matter -- or will just any ol' white do?
6. What is beige?
7. How many times more does a political candidate have to use colloquialisms to secure votes the closer he or she gets to polling day?
8. What's an appropriate type of shoe for campaigning? Does a candidate select this based on comfort or looks?

I can only cite Elvis' immortal phrase as the drama unfolds over the next nine days of public performance: "A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favourite part of the business..."