In which we ask ourselves what has happened to the profession of journalism in this country

Bernard Keane in today's Crikey Campaign bulletin:

Only in this bizarrely [sic] – and bizarrely uninteresting – campaign can Labor’s distribution of Tony Abbott’s comments on a variety of subjects be described by serious journalists as a “smear campaign” -- a term they so far haven’t used about the remorseless focus on Gillard’s marital and parental status.

The only bit of that I disagree with is the part about the campaign being boring, which as Mark suggested yesterday at Larvatus Prodeo is in itself a bizarre thing to say, what with roller-coaster polls every two minutes and superannuated pollies coming out of the woodwork to throw in their two cents' worth.

Still. While it is indeed ludicrous to call it a smear campaign, and I can imagine that seeking and finding words of Tony Abbott's to use against him must be a walk in the park, in the sense of being both easy and fun, I think they should stop it. It's a tiny bit grubby, but more to the point it makes Labor look desperate. I mean, they are desperate, but as almost every woman knows, advertising that fact only increases it threefold.

I wondered whether he'd be able to stay away ...

From today's edition of Crikey:

Next week Crikey launches a new music blog from on-line legend Tim Dunlop.

Music reviews, gig reviews and the neverending search for the perfect song.
Music for grown-ups who remember when they weren't ... You know the deal, s-x and drugs and rock n' roll, and jazz, and lieder, and disco, and Gospel, and s-x, and drugs, and country, and western, and whatever else takes our fancy ...

A new addition to what is quite possibly the country's niftiest blog network.

Lookin' forward to it.

Short memory dept

Mungo McCallum in today's Crikey:

Once again Malcolm Turnbull is appealing to Gough Whitlam for help.

Kevin Rudd’s proposal to broadband Australia is, he says, on the same scale as the wish-list of the great spendthrift, and we all know where that left Australia.

Well, we all know where it left Malcolm Turnbull; sailing through a free university course to a life of unimaginable opulence. You’d think he would be more grateful.

Bring back Hillary: Rundle

Guy Rundle writes for crikey.com.au today from Alaska and appears to be in a state of despair not entirely induced by the cold:

Would like to stay and not only because the beauty is so eerie that you could almost believe -- along with Sarah Palin's loopy church -- that Alaska is the promised land ... But also because here it's slightly easier to ignore the stunning, endless, utter ineptitude of the Obama campaign, their determination to lose under any circumstances.

... How has this come about? Simple. From day one the Obama campaign has refused to attack the Republicans for one very central failing -- that they're Republicans. That they represent the rich. That they have impoverished large sections of middle America. That there is such a thing as class. ... Their thought has always been that American politics will not bear class warfare, that you have to talk in the language of false univeralism -- we're all in this together, we've got to find consensus. To quote Kirk Douglas from Billy Wilder's great satire The Big Carnival: "We're not all in the same boat -- I'm in the boat, you're in the water."

... Really, it's a retroactive judgment on Obama. ... There is something vacant, absent about Obama, some sort of lack of understanding about what is required -- in terms of message, in terms of soundbites, in terms of sheer fight.

Hell, what would Hillary be making of this? McCain and the Republicans would be sashimi.

This is a very Rundle-esque analysis and I don't necessarily concur, lover of consensus that I am. But the metaphor about the boat and the water is pretty compelling in this case. And he is almost certainly right about Hillary.