Boris Johnson Is A Stupid Person's Idea Of A Clever Person

On one level, who cares that Boris Johnson can recite a bit of The Iliad, and what does that have to do with being Prime Minister? But it turns out that he cannot do it, anyway.

Imagine that Margaret Thatcher, who had read Chemistry at Oxford, had been asked to recite the Periodic Table, likewise learned by rote at school. Then imagine that she had done it in the wrong order, when not filling in the large gaps in her knowledge by simply making up words that were not really words at all. It would have been the end of her.

Of course, Oxford would never have admitted her to read Chemistry if she had not known the Periodic Table. In 1983, Classics was still widely taught in the state sector. From which schools other than Eton would Oxford have admitted anyone to read Classics who had had practically no knowledge of at least one of the Classical languages, but whose party piece had been to pretend to recite the beginning of one of the two best-known texts in it, a recitation that had in fact been gibberish? Did he perform it at interview? Was he interviewed?

There is no higher skill in reciting something that one had been taught by rote at school, and in any case by all accounts he cannot even do that. This recitation has impressed only people who had little or no Classics, while trained Classicists have laughed it out. But I say again that mere recitation would not be a higher skill even if he could do it, which it seems to be perfectly clear that he cannot. The mark of his intelligence would have been his analysis, of which he had none. He never does have any analysis. His book on Churchill, which was published only because Johnson was its author, contains less criticism of its subject than may be read even in Churchill's own derided and risible memoirs.

As a comment of a previous post puts it:

I've seen the clip and I don't think he knows what the words mean. It must have been very easy to get a 2:1 in Classics from Oxford in 1987, although he claims that he was mostly an ancient historian and philosopher, which might account for it up to a point. Remember that incident with The Road to Mandaly? He didn't even know what those words meant, and they were in English. He is that public school type, taught to recite the pub quiz answers and the party pieces but with no capacity for original thought. Truly, a stupid person's idea of a clever person. 

That does seem to be the consensus, yes. If Johnson sincerely believes his drivel to be by Homer, then his class is lower even than that of the people who imagine that Abba were singing about chicken tikka. And then there is his claim to turn that, the opening passage of The Iliad, for consolation in times of trouble. Consolation of what kind, exactly? Not only does he not know what the words mean, as is common consent among those who do, but unlike the rest of us he has never even read the passage in translation. He has no idea what it is about. Truly, as my interlocutor says, Boris Johnson is a stupid person's idea of a clever person.