Tag Archive for 'Christine Jackman'

Howard’s End: not E. M. Forster but Van Onselen and Senior

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Advertising, Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Federal Elections, Howardia and Media
. 27 Comments

Here’s another don’t waste your $34.95 book review, and for many of the same reasons as Mark identified as failures in an earlier 2007 federal election tome from Melbourne University Press - Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07.

If anything, Peter Van Onselen and Philip Senior’s Howard’s End: The Unravelling of a Government is an even more tedious read. That might have been evident from the fact that even the now obligatory astroturf “news” stories about the book couldn’t find too much in the way of “shock! horror!” type “revelations” to excerpt, as I observed at the time.

The blurb claims:

In the tradition of Pamela Williams’ The Victory, Howard’s End analyses and makes sense of the result and its far-reaching implications for the people of Australia.

Well, that might indeed be a worthy aim, but the problem is that the book doesn’t do much analysis, and very little sense-making and if there’s anything in it about the implications for the people of Australia as opposed to the future of the Liberal party (such insight filled gems as “rebuilding the Liberal Party after the 2007 federal election defeat was always going to be difficult…”) I’ve completely missed them.

If political journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history, this is apparently the first draft of the first draft. Through 192 pages, the book tediously recounts the events after Rudd’s ascension to the Labor leadership on an almost week by week basis. Mungo McCallum did much the same thing, but at least it was funny. If you’re looking for a reminder of the interminable “perpetual campaign”, then probably you’re pushing the tragic in political tragic a bit further than it normally should go, but you might do better to read Mungo, or indeed click on the archive of this blog. There’s only so much interest in reading exactly what John Howard announced about training policy on day whatever of the campaign, or what Rudd said in a press conference whenever in May. It reads as if someone’s sat down with a stack of newspapers and paraphrased the tedium of day to day political reporting.

But it gets worse. Continue reading ‘Howard’s End: not E. M. Forster but Van Onselen and Senior’

Inside Kevin07

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Elections, Federal Elections, Media, Politics and Polls
. 36 Comments

Hunter S. Thompson, who’s repeatedly if repetitiously quoted in Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07: The People. The Plan. The Prize., would be turning in his grave.

I’m unable to think of any good reasons for parting with $34.95 for Jackman’s book, which is touted as the ultimate insider account of the Labor Party’s campaign strategy in the lead up to last year’s federal election. As noted previously at this blog, any juicy tidbits have already been extracted in the News Limited papers, and the non-story of Peter Costello’s alleged popularity is still rumbling meaninglessly on as I write. (Incidentally, the fact that quite a bit of research mentioned in the book showing Costello as electoral poison wasn’t selected for “news” stories tells a bit of a tale in itself.)

The book’s importance - insofar as it has any - lies in what is in effect an auto-critique of the standard of political journalism in contemporary Australia, in what its publication says about the strategies of university presses and particularly MUP, and in whether it actually adds fuel to the fire of the “hollowmen” narrative of colourless political apparatchiks it tries to counter. Let’s take those in reverse order.

Continue reading ‘Inside Kevin07′