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Tony Blair in an ITV interview (screenshot): "Back to the future" character or ex-soccer coach?
Photo: ITV News / YouTube
That the rock generation would not find it easy to get older was a bit to be expected.
Internet jargon has found two words for this: "OK Boomer".
In this way, unwanted objections from older people who still consider themselves to be all-round competent are disgraced.
Tony Blair, born in 1953, hadn't been heard from in a long time.
But you really can't say that he would have spoken out without being asked.
The TV channel ITV went to the former British Prime Minister to ask him about his opinion on the Scottish independence debate, which is boiling up again with Brexit.
But the public was reluctant to listen to what the Elder Statesman had to say about the future of Britain.
Instead, the audience stared at Blair's hair in disbelief.
Tony Blair, who has long since turned gray, now wears his hair long on the back of his neck.
Whether the hairstyle is a fashion statement or just a result of the Corona lockdown time with closed hairdressing salons was immediately discussed on social media, the keyword combination "Tony Blair" and "mullet" (the English expression for "mullet") was trending.
Blair with mullet is of course a great meme.
Users have already compared him in social media posts (incomplete list :) with the professor from "Back to the Future", a football coach who has coached numerous African national teams, an aircraft designer modeled on Virgin boss Richard Branson and the grave guard from "Tales from the Crypt".
Perhaps most aptly, the post by comedy writer Tom Jamieson is reminiscent of Blair's look of an aging rock star who announces a comeback concert after drug withdrawal - with Jethro Tull and Status Quo in Hyde Park.
Tony Blair took office as prime minister in 1997 with the promise of being a breath of fresh air: he succeeded the conservative John Major, who seemed to have bureaucraticism written on his bespectacled face.
Blair, on the other hand, should stand for “Cool Britannia”: Stars like Hugh Grant, films like “Trainspotting”, bands like Blur made Britain look better in pop culture than it has for a long time - and Tony Blair surfed this wave;
he invited Noel Gallagher of Oasis to Downing Street.
This link to pop culture received credibility from the fact that Blair could perform as convincingly on the electric guitar as Bill Clinton on the saxophone. Tony Blair, it soon became known, had sung as a student at Oxford in a band called Ugly Rumors - mostly covers of Jackson Browne or the Rolling Stones. A bandmate who later became a music journalist described Blair as a bit nerdy ("He even wanted to rehearse") but successful with female audiences ("They just wanted to talk to him after the gig"). But the hairstyle was already a problem back then: "His hair was long, but looked suspiciously like folk rock for our taste," the musician recalled.
So now they are long again at the back, naturally not much is possible at the front, some men can empathize with that. The reasonably well-groomed overall impression speaks against the thesis of the involuntary corona hairstyle. Rather, what is demonstrated here is the degree of unconventionality that is acceptable in every zoom call and that even company bosses or professors can afford.
But it should seem a little youthful, paired with the tanned skin, which the open shirt button also accentuates. It is a nonchalance that another former official wants to exude - at least in the mirror of the Instagram account of his wife Soyeon Schröder-Kim: She presented us with the former Chancellor in a vest at the frying pan and planting herbs - but before Gerhard Schröder's head of hair in lockdown could have got out of shape, she picked up the scissors herself.
In 1999, Schröder and Blair jointly published a paper with which they wanted to make European social democracy appear modern again - more youthful, so to speak.
The concept, at the center of which was a pragmatic economic policy (the "Third Way"), prepared the ground for the Hartz IV regulations, with which many who are in charge of the SPD today no longer want to have anything to do with.
The “third way” that Schröder and Blair seem to be looking for today is a different one: between rock'n'roll and old age, between departure and serenity.