Politics, that word has many different meanings. The one many are most familiar with relates to party politics and trying to get elected. Under that definition we get talk of Labor v Coalition, polling, and endless horse-race journalism etc etc. But ultimately, what party apparatchiks have been forgetting for so long, and what we now see the political journosphere has also forgotten, is that the point of politics, and for most the point of government, is to try and change society in some way for the better.

Clearly people have different opinions about what that means but I’m pretty sure one thing we could all agree on is that helping people in a natural disaster like the Queensland floods is priority number one for anyone involved in politics or governance. Even for the most hardened party hack, who could only see the NBN or the stimulus spending as part of a re-election strategy, even that person would surely see this kind of tragedy, this scale of tragedy, as a time when their first role in life, their first instinct, is to help others.

In that context I find it incredibly sad that people can respond to Annabel Crabb’s latest and say “oh well, she only does politics/political analysis.” How is it not the job of someone who writes about politics and government to mention more about Anna Bligh’s efforts than the half sentence fourteen words here

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has suffered this week for two reasons; first, she was compared to an extremely useful colleague (Anna Bligh, whose ability to convey public information tautly and effectively made her indispensable), and second, she was unable to come up with much by way of national reassurance beyond the usual platitudes about hearts going out and so on.

Seriously, how caught up in the false construction that is the game of Federal Politics would you have to be to talk about a disaster as something that can be “buggered up?” How can someone write this piece and not pause halfway to think, hey, maybe there’s more to life right now than who wins the next federal election.

I don’t want to appear naive, I understand that Federal Politics is a game played 24/7 blah blah blah, and that politicians probably are thinking about their electoral prospects as this is playing out, but i really can’t comprehend how someone who doesn’t have to worry about such matters could bang out a column where they think about nothing but these kind of issues. There HAS to be more to life and political culture than who’s winning elections otherwise there is literally no point in the exercise.

What next? Meme, the musical, starring Bumcrabb and Bolt

Twenty four hours is a long time in today’s interconnected, intertubed world. Once upon a time a throwaway, smart-arse remark by a panelist on a political TV chat show would take days to grow into a meme, relying on being quoted in newspaper columns and replayed on evening news. But in the age of Twitter it takes only 24 hours for that smart-arse remark to go from being uttered on Insiders to being printed on a T-shirt and plastered all over the blogosphere.

Read the rest of the article …

Groupthink Couture Pty Ltd has also released some new t-shirts, as referenced in the article.

Keep Bolt close to your heart

Annabel Crabb: Can we be realistic about what’s going on here. This is the pointy end of the lobbying process for a piece of legislation that’s waiting, having it’s fate decided in the Senate, right? Everybody involved is bringing out their best material, you know, and whether it’s Peter Garrett flee your homes or whether it’s (motions to Bolt) you know …

Andrew Bolt: You’re right, but I think there’s a wider thing happening here in the psychology of the debate. I think the scaremongering has got to such absurd levels, absurd levels, that a lot of people even if they believe as you do in the theory and all that are sceptical.

AC: I’m not a practitioner in this debate like you are, all I’m saying is …

AB: You don’t believe it? I thought you did …

AC: … well, you’re a lobbyist too …

AB: … let me finish my point please.

AC: … you are!

AB: I’m a sceptic! I am! But the point is there are so many scares around: there’s apocalyptic fires, run for your lives the seas are coming, everything …

Barrie Cassidy: At both extremes of the debate to be fair.

AC: … I mean you post stuff on your blog that’s, you know, a new study from the University of East Bumcrack about, you know, penguins still being alive in …

AB: At least I study it. You don’t. So perhaps you let me finish my point until you know something about it.

But once you’ve done your Bolt-style learning you obviously want to tell the world so that everyone knows you’re smart with knowledge about the climate change con. With that in mind, make sure you go buy a t-shirt from Groupthink Jason’s very, very nice t-shirt shop.

I went on Insiders and all I got was this dumb t-shirt

All proceeds from sales go to Annabel Crabb’s chosen charity: Mallala Hospital in South Australia. Do it.