Make a political hero of Zack Polanski if you want. Just don’t forget to engage your brain | Marina Hyde

Shortly after Donald Trump launched his first White House run in 2015, television’s Kelly Osbourne made one of her regular appearances on The View, which is basically the American version of Loose Women but doesn’t feel the need to have a cringey title. Trump had made some extremely nasty comments about Mexican immigrants, and Kelly had a rhetorical question for the other ladies gathered round the wood-effect dining table that morning. “You kick every Latino out of this country,” she sassed, “then WHO is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?”

Oooooof. The reaction from fellow panellist Rosie Perez was instantaneously negative, to the point that even Kelly realised in the moment that this needed clean-up. Apparently there weren’t any willing rubber-gloved Latinos on hand, so madam was going to have to do it herself. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Osbourne shot back. “Come on! You know I would never mean it like that! I’m not part of this argument.” A media firestorm nonetheless ensued, though Kelly declined to apologise for even the appearance of racism, I think on the basis that people like her simply are not capable of subconsciously holding unpleasant views that they accidentally reveal while making important TV appearances.

I must say I thought of Kelly’s faux pas when I saw Green party leader Zack Polanski appearing on Question Time last week. If you missed this moment, or are trying to avoid it because you quite want to vote for him and are already trying to avoid the boob-hypnosis video (more on that later!), Zack took the opportunity of the show’s immigration special to explain to the audience: “One in five care workers are foreign nationals. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum, and I’m very grateful for the people who do this work.”

Again: ooooooof. So that’s what they’re there for – and, indeed, that’s what care work is. Still, what a standup guy for being grateful.

And thank goodness for the anti-woke vibe shift, right? After all, Zack metaphorically showing his arse while talking about elderly and disabled people’s “bums” is precisely the sort of thing that the cancellers would have cancelled you for as recently as a year ago. Imagine my synthetic shock, then, to note so many of the great witch-hunters of the past decade finding absolutely nothing to see here. Imagine my synthetic wonderment at all the Green party devotees who are able to defend this moment as coming from a good place. I guess that like Kelly, people like Zack simply are not capable of subconsciously holding unpleasant views that they accidentally reveal while making important TV appearances.

Indeed, Polanski’s reflexive supporters point to the fact his partner works in palliative care, a line of reasoning that feels not entirely unrelated to that old rhetorical masterstroke: “How can I hate women? My mum’s one.” But the Greens are currently polling almost equal with the Tories and Labour, meaning any criticism of them is conveniently dismissed by vocal supporters as evidence that critics are “rattled”. If only Kelly Osbourne had been polling at 16% 10 years ago – it would have saved her a lot of flak.

And in many ways, there can be no more sobering comment on the utter failures of this century’s various governments than the fact that 16% of the country is currently intending to vote for a guy who once told a woman he could make her breasts bigger by hypnosis. “This is an extremely new approach,” Polanski claimed in a video of the 2013 session, which he knew upfront was for an article for the Sun, “but I can see it becoming popular very quickly, because it’s so safe and a lot cheaper than a boob job.” Oh dear.

Yet so tribal is our politics these days that Zack’s “extremely new approach” in this department is routinely defended as an adorable form of altruism by people who would literally never stop decrying it had the boob-hypnosis been performed by any other male party leader. “His crime?” explained a hilarious pro-Polanski opinion article in the Evening Standard. “Remaining professional while being bated [sic] and volunteering his time and skills to help a woman feel at ease with her body … A Prime Minister who could boost cup sizes would boost the national mood and inspire more patriotism than the current competitive flag loving.” Okaaay!

Listen, nobody’s perfect. People have always held their nose at aspects of politicians’ characters in order to be able to put a cross in one box or another. But across the political spectrum in recent years, that sort of realistic clearsightedness has evaporated in favour of something much more like stan culture, where your idol has to be ferociously defended even when they’re in the wrong, simply because they’re your idol. In fact, because they’re your idol, they are axiomatically incapable of being in the wrong. This tendency is most definitely not limited to the left of that spectrum – you get it with Donald Trump or Nigel Farage or anyone whose supporters frequently refuse to be honest with themselves in the face of inconvenient revelations. But these are dangerous waters for a political culture. Wilful blindness enables bad politics.

Many people who never stop talking about red flags might be able to look past Polanski’s weird boob hypnosis or the mindset he accidentally revealed on Question Time last week. But surely it would be better if they could admit they are looking past their guy’s flaws, ideally somewhat disenchantedly, rather than shutting their eyes utterly to them. All blindly tribal politics leads to disappointment at best – but much more typically, to something worse.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist