Dalrymple on Boris

Theodore Dalrymple, writing about British bureaucracy in City Journal, mentioned Boris Johnson in an aside (italics mine).

I had reservations about Johnson as prime minister, but even when asked directly what I thought of him during an interview, I refrained from answering. A friend, who had taught Johnson history, warned me that underlying the veneer of frivolity was more frivolity—that is to say (if it is not a contradiction in terms), a profound frivolity. I nevertheless hoped that some core to his character might exist, like the graphite rod of a nuclear reactor, but it emerged that there was none, unless one counted the search for office.

This has a ring of truth to it. Boris is clearly brilliant, but to what service has that brilliance been put?

The rest of the article is excellent, as Dalrymple often is, and puts frivolity in perspective.

The opposite of frivolity is not seriousness but earnestness, which is, if anything, even worse than frivolity, for it persuades the earnest that they are working with the best of intentions and dissuades them from consideration of the actual effects of what they do. Earnestness is a kind of moral chain mail that protects against the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. It also encourages an unholy alliance between sanctimony and self-interest. It dissolves the distinction between activity and work.

Which will of course remind many of my readers of the CS Lewis quote from God in the Dock about busybodies.