As fast as Harry Mack can rap, no, Mark Rutte didn’t save that. But it didn’tmatter much. ‘s guest The Evening Show with Arjen Lubach was an Americanrapper on Monday evening, that is Harry Mack. A freestyle rapper, which inthis case means that he quickly devises and recites a text while improvising.Recitation sounds a bit stale, you could also say vomit or vomit, but thatwould give the impression that what he raps is complete nonsense or somethingcompletely incoherent, but it is not.
Arjen Lubach – he is “a big fan” – asked Harry Mack to demonstrate his art.Five people from the audience were allowed to write any word on a sign, andMack would come up with a text on the spot. Lubach himself kicked off with_face mask deal. _space biscuits, Hogwarts house and Evening show were theother words. I give it to you to make some sense out of that, but damn itworked.
Also read: Prime Minister Rutte at Op1: vague, technical and a strikingmoment
Applause, credits, quickly to the commercial and then came the specialbroadcast of On 1 at the Cat House. A one-on-one by Sven Kockelmann withPrime Minister Mark Rutte, because Sven’s regular co-presenter Fidan Ekiz wasnot there. For whose undisclosed reasons that was, I have no idea. Just likeguessing at the answer to a few more whys. Why did Rutte want a live interviewon television of just under an hour that lasted longer than sixty minutes? Whynow? Why with Sven? Halfway through the conversation, the prime minister saidhe had considered giving a Tower Room speech on Monday evening, as he didtwice during the corona crisis. But, he said, the disadvantage of this is thatno one can say anything back and he liked it so much that Sven immediatelyasked him “firm and critical” questions. He also said exactly as he knew him.For a firm, critical interviewer that must feel like a wet kiss to death.
Stop flaps between breaths
It cannot be compared entirely with Harry Mack’s performance, because MarkRutte could pretty much think in advance which words would be written on hisplate. In any case, a lot of compositions with crisis. Climate, asylum,energy, gas price, Ukraine. Furthermore, there was to be expected listeningtour (invented by Sigrid Kaag), trust and who knows, something with rotting orrubbing up. Words that don’t rhyme very well, but he did a lot better than youwould expect from someone with a 3.3 on his report card.
The crux of à l ‘improviste scribbling a text is that you have a few stoppieces at your disposal that you can always throw between breaths, or just usewhen you are short of text. Think of: “That is decided by the voter”, “If Imay for a moment”, “Let’s go back to the beginning”, “Here I have to pull twothings apart.” Then you can start your own storyline. Asking yourselfrhetorical questions is also a brilliant move and as far as I know there is noword for that style yet. “Mark, where have you been all this time?” “Mark, youshould be with us for a while now.” “What can you blame me for?” Sentenceswithout a question mark, because of course there is no real answer. Oh yes,smart too, casually plait a claim of authority into your sentence. So talk,talk, talk – “I called Zelensky this afternoon” – talk talk talk. For thechorus you can always say something like “financially healthy and strong”,“all together”, “because I like to work together” (rhymes!).
Is it incoherent what Mark Rutte said? I would say: quite the contrary. Hedidn’t let himself be fooled and whistled his own tune. It was not a sing-along, and here and there he forgot a note. But one thing you have to givehim, this European Prime Minister can do without a dog whistle.