EL PRIMER OUTSIDER

Hoy que se han iniciado prematuramente los debates electorales debido a la tan mentada candidatura de Jaime Bayly, que ha despertado inflamadas críticas y respaldos a todo nivel - desde los políticos "tradicionales" que han saltado hasta el techo porque saben que el escritor definitivamente les moverá el piso y amenazará su permanencia en el poder hasta periodistas normalmente agudos e influyentes como Pedro Salinas o Beto Ortiz que, cada quien a su estilo, se emocionan cada semana más con la perspectiva de tener un presidente escritor, me vino a la memoria el primer outsider político: Frank Zappa.

Lo que sigue es un fragmento de The Lost Interview, interesante legado viodeográfico de una larga entrevista que el genial compositor y guitarrista ofreciera en 1991 (dos años antes de morir) en un contexto en el que había anunciado su posible candidatura a la presidencia de los EE.UU. En esta parte del diálogo, el segundo moustache más famoso de los EE.UU. (el primero, por si no lo saben, es el de Mark Twain) dice algunas cosas muy interesantes acerca de cómo acercarse a la política desde fuera del sistema. No sé si nuestro Bayly ha escuchado alguna vez su música o sus declaraciones pero si se decide a tomar en serio este ditirambo que más me parece una de sus tantas bromas pesadas (opinión personal) creo que le serviría prestar un poco de atención a su manera de ver las cosas...

Desde luego que FZ era diez veces más agudo y contracultural que el señorito de terno experto en entrevistar a personajes intrascendentes, que decidió ocultar su cultura en el disfraz de bufón farandulero en el que se ha convertido (por comprensibles intereses económicos, desde luego) pero creo que vale la pena reivindicarlo como el primer outsider proveniente del mundo del rock y la literatura antisistema. Antes que Michael Moore, fan declarado del genio loco de Baltimore...



Transcripcíón mía (desde 0:37 hasta 4:18)

"If I was president? I think I’ll do a fine job because first of all I don’t owe anything to anybody and I don’t believe in a platform of any of the parties so I would start from scratch and make it up everything alone… and there’s no way that anybody in any public office is gonna get a hundred percent of the public liking his or her policies and so you just take that as a giving and you can do things…

OK but you got to get a majority support… would you change your image?

No.

OK… anyway… everybody knows what the problems are… not enough money…

Well… if I were going to run here’s exactly what I will do… first of all I would file as a candidate without party and all I will do is raise enough money to get on the ballot in every state and I wouldn’t campaign… and I happen to think that the news media will call me up to ask me “what do you think about this” and I will tell’em… meanwhile the other guys spend their money in argue about it but just being completely outside of the circuit I think you could get enough information into the marketplace of ideas to let them know what you thought about various things and the day that they got to go to the poll when you’re just sick to death of next seasons or whatever is going to be… there would be an alternative there’ll just be something that you can check on the box that you’re enable to vote against the rest of what politics is… whether is me or somebody else I think that is the key to breaking the way politics is conducted in United States cause it’s going to be a long time before any of this practitioners really change the election procedure… they’re not gonna make it fairer, they’re not gonna make the expenditures lower, they just gonna trying to keep it going the way it is and the only hope that this democracy… and I use the word advisedly in the case of United States because it’s almost evaporated… the only way that you can have a choice is for somebody to come up from nowhere and do it just the way I described completely outside of the system as simple as possible and that will enable the voters that are fed up who were always saying wonder reasons why they don’t go to the polls is cause there is no choices if they know this time they will have a choice no matter whether the candidate is… just to have a third box you could check…

You touched on something interesting: candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars on commercials… so you’re saying if that they spending the money you can manipulate the media by being so fresh and different that they follow you…

Somebody could… whether that they come and call me and my music is an example I happen to think that they would call me up because they call me now whenever they’re looking for the out wall opinion… but you can imagine the entertainment value of a guy to refuses to campaign sitting at home just saying “look you wanna find out what I think? Come and see me" I’m not gonna spend any money to you know, finance anybody’s network and then go into a hock in case I lose or wind up like John Glenn or some of these other guys who has to make a deal with Keating and all of the retire presidents until dead you know I don’t wanna get into a situation like that but… that is one possible strategy and if you have the right outside character I think it can work…"

PD: que tome Jaime Bayly, que le diga no a José Barba Caballero y a todos los demás y recupere su imagen de contracultural, que no haga campaña como cualquiera de esos... es un humilde consejo de alguien que no piensa votar por él en ningún caso porque lamentablemente no es Frank Zapp. Él está muerto y es muy difícil que salga alguien que se acerque a esa claridad antisistema ni aquí ni en los EE.UU., menos en esta época...