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Another Latham grotesquerie

February 4th 2011 05:53
: Vyoos news
mark latham

VYOOS EDITORIAL
Former Australian Labor Party leader and Prime Minister wannabe Mark Latham says incumbent Prime Minister Julia Gillard is incapable of empathy because she has no children.

Writing in a magazine column, Latham said Gillard comes across as wooden talking to the public because she chose a life without kids.


This is not an honest opinion. It is the sort of tabloid headline-grabbing, sensationalist sewage which people like Latham rely on to make a buck.

Having famously failed at a real job, they get a peroxided agent and a botoxed publicist and proceed to play the tabloid celebrity game. What you do is bad-mouth people and take extravagantly opinionated stands on any issue which suits your purpose, and watch the offers come in to appear on mindless TV reality, talkback and tabloid affairs shows.

Having your thoughts ghost-written for the redneck press and your (paid-for) picture appear in the front cover of supermarket shock sheets are the next step up the slimy slope.

It's a living. If you're outrageous enough, you can create your own cult. Think Sarah Palin.

Common sense and carefully considered opinion have no place in this game. Snipe, gripe and shoot from the lip. Hit hard, and as far below the belt as you can reach, before running to the next make-up call, via the bank.

It's like the bad loser on a football field, the guy whose side's getting beaten so he gets defensively angry. Nothing is his fault.


Gillard is a winner in the political game at which Latham proved a blundering no-hoper. Look at the scoreboard, Mark.
news.com.au




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same sex marriage gay equality
VYOOS EDITORIAL
Julia Gillard’s honeymoon period is over. For me at least.

Australia’s first female-atheist-single-redhead Prime Minister was asked during a radio talkback session this morning whether she would move to legalise same-sex marriage.

If she had answered, “No, not right now, because I have promised a federal election within a few months and I want to be allowed to focus on big-ticket issues such as health and education,” she would have had a point. Opposition leader Mad Monk Abbott, a former Catholic seminarian who has warned of the moral perils of sex before marriage, would love that issue to help him grab attention and headlines in the run-up to the election.

It would also have been an honest answer, and another first for Australian politics.

Unfortunately, honest responses have a habit of waking the masses dulled by ponderous proclamations, and Gillard, instead of treating the electorate as adults, offered just another dump-truckload of turgid political spin for the public to gag on.

“We've got very clear Labor Party policy on this and it won't be changing,'' Gillard said. “We believe the marriage act is appropriate in its current form, that it is recognising that marriage is between a man and a woman.'' Gillard said the Government had taken steps to equalise treatment for gay couples. The stance also reflected her personal view, she said.

Spin it as you like, Prime Minister, this is not equality. You either believe gays should be treated equally, or you do not. Make up your mind. Make up your party policy’s mind.

To help you do so, please consider that a policy based on the precept that “marriage is for a man and a woman” is outdated.

It suggests a moral obligation for anyone getting married to have children. There is no such moral obligation.

It suggests a social obligation to have children. There is no such social obligation, as you would know, Prime Minister.

Probably much to Mother Nature’s sadness, there is no longer even a natural imperative to have children. The world is overcrowded as it is, full of poverty and misery in slums created by the rapacity and corruption of politicians.

Marriage is for many things. Procreation, at the heart of the “man and a woman” school of thought, is just one of them.

Most of all, however, marriage is about a statement of commitment.

Does all this reflect majority community thinking? In terms of pure numbers – something which a politician understands – probably not. But that doesn’t make it wrong.

As long as the government of the day continues to carry a policy which preaches that “marriage is between a man and a woman”, they will continue to foster community acceptance of inequality, and intolerance towards committed, loving gay couples.

Today the Prime Minister had the biggest chance yet to move towards the equality she spins, and she decided it would be politically inconvenient to take it.

This is “where we are at as a community now and I think that it is appropriate for these very sensitive issues that we are reflecting community views,'' she spun.

On that basis, that radical Abe Lincoln should have left the very sensitive issue of slavery well alone.



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