A few posts back, I wrote about campaign workers Stevie Wonder and Pras travelling the world to generate support for Obama. Not because Swedes, Germans and Slovaks are expected to vote for the nextopian president, but because camp Obama has realized that any Swede, German or Slovak can make or break the public opinion.

Or any Norwegian, for that matter. Martin pointed me to the story about how a Norwegian “chicken man” saved the leader of the country’s socialist party.

In 2002, socialist party leader Thorbjorn Jagland collapsed after the elections went against him and his party. The media were all over him, headlines everywhere screaming out his failure, reporters and newscasts repeating the question whether he will stay on the post, and suggesting he should leave politics altogether. Cameras and microphones followed Jagland all the way from the ballots to the hospital where he was taken in due to exhaustion from the media frenzy.

Then, in front of the cameras outside the hospital, the “chicken man” appears behind the state television reporter in live broadcast. Chanting “first we’re bad, then we’re nice”, he sets not only the reporter but the entire nation off balance. As it turns out, the chicken man is an employee at the state television, too, heading out on a mission not sanctioned by his employer, to save Jagland from the witch hunt.

And the chicken man prevails. Once the news is out, newspapers and newscasts focus on first the chicken man (“who is he?”), then his relation to his employer and his right- or wrong-doing (“can he really do this?”), then his chant (“bad or nice?”), then on media ethics (“how far can we go?”), and then on… completely different stories. By the time the media had turned full circle, everyone had forgotten about socialist party leader Jagland.

A political disaster averted by a chicken race. Instead of complete demise, Jagland recovered and is today the leader of the Norwegian parliament. 

 A Norwegian language course: