Larvatus Prodeo

One thing people might have noticed around LP is that we’re focusing less and less on the daily diet of the political news cycle, even if we do still think it’s worthwhile having a bit of fun poking holes in the wilder fantasies of the “media narrative”, and highlighting the comedy act that is the Liberal leadership wars. We’re trying to provide a wider smorgasbord of posts – from policy focused pieces to cultural stuff to all sorts of interesting and noteable things we pick up around the intertubes.

That’s very different from what political blogging was like in the Howard era. And that raises a broader question – why is there such a disconnect between the state of political journalism and anything that anyone actually cares too much about in the Rudd era? I think there are possibly two answers to that question.

The first is that a managerialist government deliberately downplays the politics of governing, and Rudd himself usually avoids sharpening the edges of any political knives, leaving the Liberals hoist on their own petard. This is classic state Labor style, and I still don’t think either the Liberal “strategists” or the commentariat get it. Effectively, if all the colour and movement is on the opposition side – leadership squabbles, hyperbolic pronouncements, noisy personal attacks, they get to fill the space of “politics” in the public mind – to the extent that anyone pays any attention to them at all, it’s a big turnoff. While the government looks calm and unruffled. Waiting for Costello might be a fun game for the meejah to play, but most Australians couldn’t give a flying freak.

Continue reading ‘Relaxed if not necessarily comfortable: On (blogging and) politics in the Rudd era’