SURVIVOR
Damien Murphy in The Sydney Morning Herald, July 3, 2013
“Rob Oakeshott, the independent MP who kept Labor in power for three years, believes the [Kevin] Rudd ascendancy has exposed a large number of Australians as policy-free zones. ”That there is a 16 per cent change for no other reason than a personality change should be a mirror on all Australians,” he said.
”In just four days, the polls showed a personality change can be a game changer, not policy. What does it say about the place of policy in Australia? There’s now apparently little place for policy. Something fundamental may have occurred in the way Australia does its politics.”
Graham Winter, SMH again …
… [H]e can sell the message that Kevin is here to fix all the problems. Of course, he can’t fix most of them but he can paper them over and the 24/7 media likes papering, particularly if it’s colourful, such as a warning of war with Indonesia.
Finally, and probably most worrying for the Liberals, is that he can provide a palatable alternative. For all his failings and failures, Rudd is only a divisive figure to those who are close to him. “He’s like an iceberg,” suggested a colleague who has worked closely with him, “All white, bright and clean in public but totally different under the surface when cameras and journalists aren’t around.”
James Wolcott in Vanity Fair, December 2009 …
“In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer’s passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down.”
Flick the switch to vaudeville, the monkeys are dancing, and the clowns play on.
The Drug of a Nation.
The Audience voted. They tweeted, text’d, phoned and they SMS’d, “We want our boy back in the house, or we ain’t playin’ no more!”
So Second-Chance Charlie is back, with a nod and a wink from the judges, the final elimination round, and a shot at redemption – last time he leapt for risotto, and we wound up with porridge, so he won’t be making that mistake again, he tells us; nowadays, he’s changed, more a team player type of guy, ready to take advice, ready to roll with the rules …
… Back in the house, all the other contestants think he’s just a self-involved, wanking creep, nothin’ but front; they hear him at 2 a.m. through the walls, speaking at himself, rehearsing his funky little aphorisms and homilies for the mums and the dads and the little ones at home; gotta zip, folks, and start cooking with gas …
“I don’t like that woman. She talks funny and she walks like a duck. I hope she loses.” – Appalled of Tumbleweed Fats, Qld.
Clap hands, folks, here comes Charlie …
Kevin Rudd may have emerged (briefly, it seems) as the biggest potential stumbling block to Tony Abbott’s presumed easy waltz to the Lodge, but I’m not much inclined to join in the parade and start cheering quite just yet, as there lingers a foul taste in my mouth, and a fetid stench in my nostrils about the political shenanigans of the last year or two and a general sense of discomfit all ‘round at the way this game was played out, mostly from under the barrel, megaphones a-blaring …
Mark Latham from the Financial Review …
“[Kerry-Anne Walsh’s new book, The Stalking of Julia Gillard] lists scores of examples in which reporters assisted Rudd’s destabilisation campaign against Gillard. They published inaccurate information from off-the-record briefings, giving greater priority to the creation of headlines than the truthfulness of their work. Then, having attended Rudd’s press conferences, at which he declared his loyalty to Gillard, they turned a blind eye to the deceitfulness of his position; a case of journalists allowing lies to stand on the public record.”
Rob Oakeshott again …
“I have been shocked, frankly, over the last three years, to meet ugly Australia and just to see the width and depth of ugly Australia.”
Should’ve kicked that bitch to death. Should’ve had her throat slit. Should’ve been dragged out to sea and drowned. Nothin’ but meat for men to feed on …
… Rudd skulking about in the shadows, a brooding brat denied what he feels his rightful billing as the star of the show, so he sets about sabotaging all the props he can by way of revenge, just pulling up short of setting the curtains afire …
No, thanks.
I’ve never involved myself in politics or political activity beyond voting every few years, and the last couple times I only did that to avoid the fine, but all this bullshit, this base, fangs-bared, face-scratching, bitch-slapping catfight of epic banality that has so consumed and inflamed the oxygen around every so-called debate, discussion, proposal and personality; so poisoned the public discourse with imagery and allusions best left in torture p0rn, where Julia Gillard’s every step, action or announcement became cause for violently unhinged condemnation leaves me more than a little embarrassed identifying as an Australian, for it would seem the definition of “Australian” now is “hysterically squealing, violently ignorant fuck-nugget”.
No, thanks.
Kerry-Anne Walsh’s book about the stalking of Gillard is no sober, measured assessment of these times, more a shoot-from-the-hip as-it-happened diary of the events, shot through with anger, contempt and disbelief: anger at the political engineers of all the rumours and the bullshit (TeamRudd); contempt for the so-called journalists and commentators who thought they were players in the game and gave the bullshit credence; and disbelief that all this bullshit seemed to go down a treat for some reason in the land of the long white sock, where the pokies trill all of the day and all of the night, and Murdoch’s “The Daily Telegraph” is the pamphlet of choice …
… On page one, a headline will try scaring the living shit out of you, page three will make some shit up about someone that will run on page one tomorrow, and page five will run a few hundred words on all this made-up shit under the banner of “opinion” by some lumpen-arsed dickferret that will probably amount to little more than a laundry list of perceived character flaws and personality faults of whoever the shit’s been made up about, political reporting bought to by TMZ-style, your local newspaper may have lots or none …
No, thanks.
… Kevin Rudd does not come off well in Walsh’s book – a Milky Bar bitterball of tightly wound neuroses and petty resentments, empty of ideas, head puffed full of venom; he’s Walter Mitty if Walter Mitty were reimagined by David Lynch, a pencil-sharpening bureaucrat with pockets full of pens down there in the basement stabbing holes in cardboard boxes in the dark, waiting for his day to come where he’ll show ‘em all and then they’ll be sor-ry …
Pretty much what I’d always thought of the guy, from day one.
Call it a hunch.
If Tony Abbott’s the five year old bully who likes to smash everyone’s Lego and throw sticks at girls, Rudd’s the seeming picture of innocence who secretly cheats at exams and sucks up to all the teachers, not a one of whom can stand a bar of the little cunt.
I didn’t vote for Kevin Rudd when he was elected PM over John Howard – I voted against John Howard.
I didn’t vote for Julia Gillard when she stood against Abbott in 2010 – I voted against Tony Abbott.
But this time …
I wouldn’t vote for Tony Abbott with a gun to my head, but thinking of all this shit over the last couple years, and the events of the past few weeks, I can’t bring myself to vote for Rudd just to oppose Abbott.
So that’ll be a tick for The Greens, then.
“Lots of comments regarding ”popularism not policy” in Thursday’s letters. We had a prime minister who was all about policy, but the gender didn’t sit right with Australian men, and women criticised her clothing, hair, hobby and marital status. A record number of policies were passed during Julia Gillard’s tenure. I doubt whether those commenting would know 25 per cent of the policies passed under her leadership.
We now have an Opposition Leader who never fronts the media unless a senior member of caucus is looking over his shoulder waiting to step in when he falters and a Prime Minister who is tweaking policies that were introduced by Gillard. Australians deserve what they get at the next election.” – Lyne Dobson, Waterview Heights
