Abbott won.
Not the same situation, I know, and we are almost certainly about to get our first female Prime Minister. But nobody knows what might happen to her then. Caucus is meeting as we speak. If she becomes the next Prime Minister, all the cross-currents dominated by the masculine values grounded in the horrible combination of a will to power with short-sighted self-interest that we've already seen bring Rudd to crisis point -- the machinations of the factions that got her to this point, the Gotcha games of journalists, the insane behaviour of media giants, the general basic assumption that men are in charge, and all the various things we've already seen the Labor Party and the media do to the like of Joan Kirner, Cheryl Kernot, Carmen Lawrence, Kristina Keneally and all the other women that the ALP over the years has handed a poisoned chalice and impaled on a stick with which to face the future -- will toss her hither and yon on the high seas of politics.
She can swim, I think, and she looked as if she understands that you can survive if you stay calm and float. Only one way to find out and clearly we are about to.
I've got the telly on the ABC, which has been screening grabs from earlier profiles and news items, and at one point someone asked Gillard and Abbott whether they liked each other. Abbott did that forced, nervous braying laugh; Gillard smiled. 'I think I'm a much more normal person than Tony,' she said.
I look forward to her normality at the microphone, where for the first time in thirteen years we won't have a Prime Minister sawing the air with his right hand like a fourteen-year-old Hamlet in the school play.
Word's coming through in Chinese whispers on the teeve is that the numbers are so lopsided that Rudd may have pulled out of the ballot. Spare a thought for him this morning, and for Gillard as she looks down the barrel of the next few weeks and mo-
Wow, it's through. Elected unopposed.
Now is the time for all good women to come to the aid of the Party leader, I reckon.
" cross-currents dominated by the masculine values grounded in the horrible combination of a will to power with short-sighted self-interest"
ReplyDeleteI have to say with respect Pav, and in the context of my preferring Gillard over Rudd, overall, that there is nothing in any construction of gender I've ever read that places Gillard's conduct, manner, or political style in a different camp to the others.
This was more in the style of florentine Italy, brutal, violent, cold... a study in fact in the kind of political putsch that dominated European tradition during the times of continual war...
She's not WORSE for that than a man, of course- and I concede women do sometimes get held to higher standards than men in such matters.
Fingers crossed for some improvement where it matters, in policy, as well as in polls.
Wikipedia's already updated. Golly gosh!
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to add, on the gender perspective though, I AM extremely pleased that at least I can tell Bear that it isn't impossible for a representative of over half the population to actually become leader of that population.
ReplyDeleteGod, not that I'd wish a political career on my kids!
Armagny, I was speaking systemically about values in general, not about individuals on an essentialist way. (In the sense that Margaret Thatcher may have been a woman but not only was she not a Sister, she was actively a patriarch.) I think you'd agree that, Gillard's own style aside (and don't forget we don't actually know what course of events led up to this morning; she may have been put in an impossible position), that list of values I've put there is traditionally associated with masculinity and the values by which it has stayed dominant in public life.
ReplyDeleteAgree absolutely about Bear!
" that list of values I've put there is traditionally associated with masculinity and the values by which it has stayed dominant in public life"
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