It’s hardly news

I was inclined to take a swipe at the ‘Jackson distraction’ until I realised it was the current reality; unreality is the current reality. Kevin Rudd knows that, so does Barrack Obama – they realise the great public is sick of politics and looking to pop culture distractions.

In many ways that is why they achieved the confidence of their respective electorates; they are moderate, calm and tend to avoid or disarm contentious issues. They both know that a truth is far more disarming than the easy lie; so they easily avoid most dramas.

The approach was demonstrated by Rudd last week in what has been inanely dubbed ‘the Ute-gate Affair’. It was an opposition attempt to find a chink in the PM’s armour; a claim that Rudd had represented a request on behalf of an old mate, who it seems had once lent Rudd an old ute (pick-up) during an election campaign.

Give me a break, even the PM is still an elected REPRESENTATIVE, for old mates as well as the rest of us. Rudd went on to deny the claim, even after he was told there is evidence by way of an email from Rudd staff to treasury. That produced mega excitement, for the opposition; Rudd lies to parliament!

It turned out that the email was a lie, and Rudd simply stuck to the truth. The story would not have survived the Jackson Distraction anyway, many real political stories are simply withering on the vine. We have the monumentally incompetent NSW government, parliament in fact. But pop culture should be able to cover that.