It was revealed this morning by a shocked ABC that a ‘dirt file’ was being assembled on Opposition front-benchers in the Prime Minister’s office which ‘targeted’ events in their lives that occurred not only during, but before, their lives in politics — during, for instance, their student years.
What a big surprise. It has been a commonplace in politics since early Sumerian times but some in the ABC have not heard of it yet, apparently, or not before yesterday. They did not hear of it when the Liberals were ‘targeting’ Slipper, Thomson, Shorten, Gillard, Rudd, Kernot, Evans, Bartlett, McLeay, Campbell, Firth, Brown, Stewart, Rees, Tripodi, Keating, Hawke, Dunstan, Cairns or Chifley.They did not hear of it when the Tea Party put it about that Obama was a Muslim terrorist homosexual Kenyan Socialist drug-friendly Baptist Fundamentalist racist bent on Communising America or when Nixon’s people put it about that a Kennedy had drowned a pregnant girl in a car. They only heard of it apparently for the first time yesterday. And Wow, they said, wow. This is big, big news.
After twenty years in the political backroom, comrades, I can give you this assurance: you do dig up what you can that is harmful your enemies when you are in politics for this is what politics is mostly about. You would not be doing your job if you were not doing it. The very meaning of ‘backroom’ and ‘staffer’ and ‘political adviser’ is people who do this. Yet once again a news organisation is evincing shock that politics proceeds in the usual way, by allegation, denial, motions of No Confidence, dlamaging headlines, resignations, commissions of enquiry, Chinese whispers and televised Question Times.
It has, believe me, happened before. Caesar is husband to every wife, his political foes alleged, and wife to every husband. The Virgin Queen is tupping her bastard son Essex. Lord Nelson’s menage a trois makes his command of the Navy now uncertain. Parnell’s affair with Kitty O’Shea has ended, we fear, all hope of Irish liberty. Mrs Thatcher’s affair with Cecil Parkinson will bring her down.
This has been the basic fare of politics and political contention since Arthur, heeding rumours, ordered Guinevere burnt at the stake for adultery. What is not usual is what Abbott, the Tea Party, Fox News and Murcoch’s Australian papers have been up to lately — what might be called the Politics of the Exclamation Mark.
You say anything, and you add an exclamation mark to it, and an ignorant audience believes a gaolable wrongdoing has occurred. He sent a flirty text-message to a thirty-four year old! He spent eighty dollars in a single night on taxis! He bought one whole Ecstasy tablet out of eight hundred sold that night in Glebe! He said ‘fucking fantastic’ to some schoolchildren! She was rude to a Woy Woy waiter!
Many, many African and Middle Eastern and South Asian migrants do not know that these are trivial matters, and edgily go along with Andrew Bolt or Paul Murray when they call them resignation matters, warily cheering along. This kind if echo effect works well in places without a moral compass, like Penrith or Ipswich. Careers are ruined recklessly by it, as in McCarthyist times.
Footballers in particular are smashed in their careers for, say, committing adultery or accepting proffered threesomes or gang bangs with teenage fans. It goes without saying that footballers cannot do this. They are role models, they are opinion formers, they are local heroes, and they may not do this, never ever. Yet journalists, on the other hand, who are opinion formers, and editorial writers, who are by definition opinion formers, never, never lose their careers if they commit adultery or schtupp adolescents. The exclamation mark does not reach as far as them.
The net result is a world-bestriding Murdochism now able to destroy at will anyone for doing anything. Jacqui Smith’s husband watched porn and she was destroyed for it. Verity Firth’s husband bought a tablet and she was destroyed for it. David Campbell drove to a legal club in a legal car he had a legal right to drive and he was destroyed for it. The exclamation mark, like time’s arrow, was a WMD by then and one by one it brought them down.
Murdoch likes this kind of thing. He can’t win on policy, so he cheats his way to infamous victories with human behaviour. Gore, he said, was ‘wooden’ and so could not be President. Neil Kinnock’s wife Glenys ‘wore the pants in that family’, so we have to vote not for him but for, er, Margaret Thatcher, a real man’s man. Prince Charles used the word ‘tampon’ in a private conversation so he cannot be King. Kevin Rudd saying ‘mate’ to Kerry O’Brien was a ‘meltdown’, so he cannot be Prime Minister. Bob Carr said ’2001′ instead of ’2000′, so he must resign as Foreign Minister.
It’s frightening he can make so much of so little. Judge Welch’s phrase ‘reckless cruelty’ suits him as it does McCarthy.
Things may be changing, however, as Rebekah inches toward imorisonment. Lies, bugged truths and press barons’ crazed agendas are unpopular as never before in England, even, tonight, with his glove puppet David Cameron, and John Major’s claim last week of a straightforward attempt by Murdoch to corrupt him has yet to shake down into into imprisonment for the Dirty Digger himself, but it will come.
And the politics of the exclamation mark may dwindle a bit, perhaps, in the wake of the innocence of Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper, in Australia as well as England.
There may be good, rare, Rupertless days ahead.
There really may.
Name:
They are going to have to widen the doors to the House of Reps for the bill by bill sprint for the exit as unacceptable votes increase like the pox. Handicapping will necessarily come to the fore to not disadvantage Members at the back of the chamber, and the Speaker will require a chalk board and Gladstone bag to take bets and change odds on the first, second and third placings out the door, perhaps a hurdle or two and a water trap would make it more televisual for the general public.
Speeches for new members will now be more like confessions and I see a splendid time guaranteed for all.
“…Obama was a Muslim terrorist homosexual Kenyan Socialist drug-friendly Baptist Fundamentalist racist bent on Communising America.”
He sounds like an all round guy and I would vote for him.
I wrote a play, ‘EVERYBODY LOVES CALIGULA’ in the mid-2000′s, set in the ‘dirty tricks’ department of a ruling government, inspired in the venture by revelations of the time (Howard was in office) of a ‘dirty tricks’ unit operating inside Parliament House – front page coverage – so for Tony Abbott to be mounting his high horse railing against the current govt in ‘gathering information’ on he and his gang
of honest folk (‘mining industry is doomed/so lets buy into more mining shares’, et, al) and to swear there was no such unit back in Howard’s days is bullshit of the rankest quality. From ‘Honest John’ to ‘Trustful Tony’. Democracy suffers when there is no strong opposition party to ruling governments.
The names have changed, only the level of desperation fluctuates!
They don’t come any more desperate than this opposition, facing the imminent destruction of their fear campaigns on the carbon price, the mining tax and a host of others over the next few months.
Dirt has been flung for years and years but what amazes me is the need to have the politicians do the gathering themeelves. Come on. Affairs aren’t that much are they today and homosexuality isn’t susceptible to blackmail these days, surely (although that hasn’t stopped people throwing hints around every now and then)? The political club of the supine press gallery and politicians hasn’t exposed the real dirt – the paedophiles whose ‘dirt’ is criminal and whose character needs to be exposed in the public interest. It has taken an actual arrest, years after the damage started to be done, virtually in front of the press gallery members (“yes, he seemed to have a lot of young nieces visit him” was one wimpish statement by a press gallery member after one federal arrest).
I said that the Slipper cabcharge questions wouldn’t get anywhere because none of the timeservers in parliament would want all their scams exposed to the light of a full investigation anyway. Frequent flyer points, residential allowances, mailing allowances, even post-parliamentary benefits – you could go on forever –have been rorted from the time they were instituted I suspect.
I am saddened that our ABC does not seem to be unbiased, see Uhlmann, and Tony Jones’ Q&A…no doubt others…
“…the Tea Party put it about that Obama was a Muslim terrorist homosexual Kenyan Socialist drug-friendly Baptist Fundamentalist racist bent on Communising America. …”
And on top of this, that very rich fellow who’s too tight to get a decent haircut said Barrack didn’t have a birth certificate.
Not that it mattered, though… because everyone had already worked out which of them really was the bastard.
(Especially by the way he uses WorkChoices on the telly each week).
Pundits are treated like fools every time we read this pap.
The question to my mind is should the personal become the political?
Can they indeed ever be separate?
I think they could be, but the culture is too entrenched for it not to be. And that in some ways is a shame.
Well if Gillard has a Dirt Unit as Bob suggests in the PM’s department, then I do hope they start flinging it about and soon.
Bring it on.
You never know what might happen and where it might just stick.
Ms Gillard also has an interesting past when she worked for Slater & Gordon and was “young and naive” which judging by the hysterical calls she made to Chris Mitchell of The Australian last year – she’s a tad squeamish about having it aired.
I’m sure Bob Ellis knows all about it.
Didn’t it lose Glen Milne his job and the job of 2UE radio host Michael Smith?
Hot stuff.
Bob, how about shedding some light on this affair? It would make compelling reading…Or is it just more dirt to sweep under the Labor carpet?
Too right, Frank. The Bunny Party have had it too easy for too long. Dirt on Rabbitt and the Bunnies? Let’s see it and soon.
Personally, I was shocked when I heard that King Solomon was tupping the Queen of Sheba. The opposition of the time loyally tried to hush it up, of course, but leaks will happen . . .
Four billion years.
I am sure you are right Bob. Digging and using dirt is standard practice among politicians.
But I am sure you will accept, it is pretty grubby behavior and not something that the rest of us in more normal occupations should approve of.
In over 40 years in a profession, business and the arts I have never seen directly stuff like that.
Makes me glad I have stayed away from politics.
You seem somewhat surprised Bob that people abuse power for their own ends.
Are you really surprised?
Are you, as one “twenty years in the political backroom”, really surprised at Murdoch’s machinations, or are you simply smarting because you are on the wrong end of it?
In my experience Bob someone is always on the end of something.
No, I’m surprised at Murdoch’s machinations. So, in their time, were Whitlam, Wilson, Callaghan, Foote, Kinnock, Major, Blair, Gore, Howard, Rudd, Brown and Gillard. He is unlike any other newspaper proprietor in his constant hubris, unfairness and big lies.
We shall not see his like again.
“He is unlike any other newspaper proprietor in his constant hubris, unfairness and big lies.”
Unlike any other contemporary proprietor, perhaps. But very like Beaverbrook, Northcliffe, William Hearst.
Why won’t we see his like again? Media conglomerates and political power structures have an obvious fascination with each other and the temptation to intermingle is irresistible.
The names you mention were not “surprised” at Murdoch’s machinations – they were simply surprised at him turning those machinations on them. As I said earlier – someone is always on the end of something, and they usually are the one’s “surprised”.
We may not see “his” like again, you are quite correct, but we will see that “like” again.
In fact, we see it every day.
Murdoch is unique in modern times but compared to Beaverbrook and some of the other press lords, he is an amateur.
It’s hard to imagine anyone getting such power again. Media is too diverse.
Isn’t the issue here that Gillard’s words again come back to haunt her?
“No dirt-unit under the government that I lead”
Hypocrisy on both their houses?
This tactic mud slinging/smear tactics failed in VIC and QLD and will fail in the federal election.’
I can imagine the “Wilson” and “Heiner” affairs would be fist cab of the ranks in the Coalitions retaliatory strikes.
It also shows that the Government is still focused on the opposition rather than Governing.
Simon Crean was quite scathing, are there some cracks appearing in the PM’s support from the Vic right factions?
The fellow who sent the memo has been fired so I think the issue will die in a few days. And that will be a good thing. Gillard and all must be embarrassed.
“Gillard and all must be embarrassed”
And very VERY grateful that the Libs taking the high road, supposedly, will probably not dare to raise Bruce Wilson again.
http://www.fortunetellers.com.au/fortunetellers-articles/1996/7/30/ruptured-union-seeks-enemy-within/
The ‘fellow’ concerned came from the VIC ALP. where he had run the last Brumby campaign.
What were they thinking, even allowing him near the office.
Twenty billion years.
The one thing Abbott does well is “three word sentences”….
Forty billion years.