If there is anything we should have learned from the slow-mo, multi-vehicle car-crash that is News Limited's credibility and the downfall of the British establishment; the Victorian Labor Party's election giveaway to a vacuous opposition; and the tumultuous downfall of 'celebrities' from Rex Hunt and Ben Cousins to Christine Nixon, it's that those who rise by media approval, will fall by it.
Public figures who survive the collapse into iniquity need a sense of self and the ridiculous. Once, talkback radio hosts and reporters drummed up Julia Gillard as tomorrow's PM and the day's bright star in the political firmament. Today she's 'JuLiar', the 'witch' and a fallen princess chased into a Paris subway, pursued by paparazzi.
Her and her party's polling is at an historic low: the budgie-smuggler's is absurdly high. The differences between them are show and tell, rather than science and economics. And the 'polls' show how well or not the other's advertising works.
What's going wrong? As one of my Facebook 'friends' asked this week: 'Why are people so unkind to Julia?'. One succinct, and only partly sexist, response from the pathetically small remnant of Labor sympathisers who subscribe to that page is worthy of thought, though not my approval:
'Because she talked Rudd out of the ETS then knifed him then said NO CARBON TAX, East Timor Solution, citizens assembly, cash for clunkers then ... Forget what I said here's another plan. Because she sent juniors to national security meetings. Because she cries when things are going askew ... Because she got her seat by gender quota affirmative action ...'
Gillard actually won preselection and election on merit, but the sly slur shallowly pulls in the undertow of public opinion. Such shallow surfacing on Facebook is a sign of the prison our irresponsibly libertarian, monopolised media have made for us, reinforced by our addiction to instant judgments; to witticisms and strong opinions rather than wisdom and experience in opinion pages; to blogs rather than essays.
Gillard lost 'it' — that is, our warm inner glow about her — when she gave her first speech after calling the 2010 election and it was a string of dumbed-down clichés arising from a series of shallow 'focus groups' slavishly adopted