Monday, May 09, 2005
Fitzy's Limitations
I look forward to the Peter Fitzimons column in the Sydney Morning Herald every Saturday, and to a lesser extent to his Sunday column as well. He is an entertaining scribbler, and has caused me to chuckle out loud on a number of occasions.
Which is not to say that I agree with his views - on the contrary. I gloss over his repeated, boring slights at "Betty Windsor", rugby league, John Howard and the Iraq War. My working assumption is that the ex-rugby player is a man who has packed his head into a good few too many scrums. I can forgive him for the consequent limitation and drive-headed approach.
The (meat-headed) substance of a person's views is in many cases irrelevant to the attraction of their form.
Hence, in the case of music, the beauty in certain national anthems can be separated from identification with a particular nation, the passions aroused by religious hymns rendered irrelevant to identification with a particular religion, and agreeability of popular music distinguished from the radicalized or pea-brained views of the performers (Annie Lennox, David Bowie and George Michael come to mind here).
But there is a fine line. A fine line separating the point at which one charitably tolerates the bad while focussing on the good, from the beyond: where the good is drowned in the sea of the offeror's essential stupidity.
I suspect, most unfortunately, that the Peter Principle started to catch up to Fitzy this week, when he offered encouragement to Oz Treasurer Costello to follow in the footsteps of Former PM Paul "Black Dog" Keating and stab John Howard in the back.
Some of you will remember that then-Treasurer Keating brutally ripped the heart out of his then-boss, long-serving PM Bob Hawke, back in the early '90s. Australia suffered the ignominy of an unelected PM, in the miserable and foul-mouthed form of Keating, after that act.
Even with huge media fanfare Keating lasted but one elected term before being buried by Howard in the garbage heap of history.
Now sarcastic second-rower Fitzy, no fan of John Howard and no fan of the Liberal Party, is - together with a chorus of pro-Labour scribes - aggressively voicing the opinion that Costello should try to emulate Keating.
This, for me, represents the key test of Costello's career, his worthiness for the coveted role now subject to a final crucial test: whether he is stupid and craven enough to listen to them.
