Distractions

The Sunday Telegraph 8 August 2010

Right, this is the last cartoon involving Kevin Rudd’s gallbladder. Unless I get really stuck. Or it’s funny. Alright, it probably isn’t the last cartoon involving Kevin’s gallbladder, but my intentions are good. You can take that as an election promise if you like.

There’s been a lot said about how the Return Of Kevin is going to be a big distraction from Julia’s campaign, but not a lot said about how that might actually be a good thing. Back when Julia decided Kevin had to go, there was a definite implication that Things Were Going To Be Different and the government was going to get Back On Track and if that had in any way actually occurred, I think we’d all be very pleased.

Sadly, the only thing that really seemed to change was an intensification of the politically expedient dumping of anything that the focus testing said wasn’t pleasing the good burghers in the marginal electorates, which you can safely say was the reason the government was in trouble in the first place. So, if the tracks were in fact leading the government directly towards a first term defeat by Tony Bloody Abbott Of All People For God’s Sake, then well done, Julia.*

This is what makes me think that maybe the whole soap opera thing might not hurt in the long run. Due to modern election campaigns being run by risk-averse poll-driven spin-doctoring spivs who if I had my way would be all lined up against the wall (preferably one Built during the Education Revolution) and shot right through their iPhones**, most voters have sensibly abandoned all hope of hearing any sensible policy pronouncements on, well, anything, and are following the election campaign, if at all, entirely for entertainment value.

Now for sheer soap-style  entertainment, the ALP have totally pwned the Coalition. You’d think the man to watch would be Tony Abbott with Barnaby Joyce as comic relief and Malcolm Turnbull as the evil plotter, but Malcolm’s playing the sort of straight bat you can only learn on the playing fields of Sydney Grammar, Barnaby’s been sent somewhere that the NBN’s never going to go even if it does get finished and Tony’s stuck grimly to the script which is very short and written entirely in bullet points involving stopping things happening.

As we’ve all become used to voting off the least interesting contestant in our post Big Brother society, dragging the man Julia stabbed in the back from his hospital bed, sans bile duct, with the odd excruciatingly awkward encounter where they try to pretend they don’t fervently wish the other would spontaneously combust so they could dance around their crackling corpse roasting marshmallows and singing “ding dong the witch/warlock is dead” is absolute soap opera gold and neatly distracts the punters from the absence of anything resembling a palatable vision for the future of the country from either dire proposition, so when the audience gets its say on the 21st, they may just decide to vote the less entertaining roommate out.***

*Yes, I am aware that I’m using a lot of capital letters today in the classic Slightly Mental Letter To The Editor fashion, but polls show that the marginals are really Responding To Capital Letters at the moment, so Suck It Up.

**Okay, perhaps I am Slightly Mental.

***Very Long Sentences are also A Bad Sign.****

****As are footnotes.*****

*****I’ll stop now.