I try and steer clear of political blogging, not because I have no views (I do) but because this blog is about business communication, not politics.
But every now and then something crosses my radar and I feel compelled to add to the discussion.
I was sorely tempted to weigh into the conversation about Family First and their scarily fundamentalist views on any behaviour not strictly viewed as orthodox — I was always under the belief that Jesus would love the people, not their behaviours, but what do I know? — and a party who then announces they are giving all their preference votes to Hanson and ‘One Nation’. People and parties known for their xenophobia and ‘inclusionism’.
But not even that issue was enough to get my blogging keyboard out.
So what was? A curiously serendipitous juxtaposition, that’s what.
As his legion of fans will know, Trevor Cook is hanging around train station coffee shops in London, playing with his new Mac, not playing with his Optus phone because they bizarrely killed his global roaming account and couldn’t get it reopened in time, and generally making a nuisance of himself as anyone Australian and 195cm tall is apt to do.
Trevor has been crafting a series of thought pieces on the election over at the ABC website and, as is usual with the man, they are lucid, well thought out and devoid of ‘spin’.
Today I was listening to Margaret Throsby on ClassicFM interviewing some retired ad man about his new book and they also got into discussion about this election.
The reason I juxtapose these two events (Throsby on radio and Cook in London) is because they both said the same thing: “this election is tiresome and more than just politically-correct, it’s po-faced-correct.”
Peter Garrett, not a man shy of creating a bit of a scene — a man who, according to his drummer, is a ‘piss in the middle of the bowl’ kind of guy — gets lambasted because he dares to pick on someone his own size (a shock jock, and someone that I have no doubt Peter could verbally shred given half a chance).
This election is not just about mismanagement of the economy (Lord knows the coalition has done that admirably – read Trevor’s thoughts on it) but even more about who can look the most sober, the most calm, the most without a sense of humour.
We’ve long known that John Howard has a sense of humour — look at his cabinet choices (boom, boom) — but Rudd? You wouldn’t know that it was the same Rudd who was in the strip club in New York, would you? But for some reason Labour have decided to play ‘piety’ over ‘personality’ as if the history books somehow got it wrong (I call as my witnesses Hawke, Keating, Kennett, Clinton and any other politician who still won despite being ‘naughty’ or who showed humanity, a tear, a smile, cracked a joke and who thus got the people on their side).
For some bizarre reason Kevin Rudd’s handlers want the party more pious and devoid of humour than Howard’s mob, which no doubt suits Howard down to the ground. I know that Alexander Downer has a mischievous sense of humour, but only his aides get to see it, and the rest of us get left with a cabinet seriously devoid of any ‘lighter’ side to them.
This election is about being boring which, whilst a brilliant pop song for the Pet Shop Boys, is not compelling me to rave with enthusiasm about how the election process is being communicated — other than to remark that the Democrats must have seriously run out of money if they can’t even afford for their candidates to smile in their mugshots. The one for my area reminds me of a dentist I once knew.
Currently listening to: Pet Shop Boys – Behavior – Being Boring
