Reading or listening to Phillip Adams makes my head asplode, and so, over the years, I’ve learned to avoid having my eyes or ears in the same place as his words. Makes our relationship quite amicable. But twice this week I’ve accidentally come into contact with him. Once, because I’d forgotten to never have the radio tuned to Radio National when Late Night Live is repeated and then again today, because he has a piece in The Australian somewhere in the papery bit and not in the magazine.
Why did I do it? Why did I read that piece? The first sentence was innocuous enough, “We’d planned ‘Rudd’s first interview since the coup’ for the previous week.” Okay, trademark namedropping right from the opening ‘we’, but anyhoo and moving on. To the second sentence then, “Kevin knew I’d totally opposed the coup and resigned from the ALP in protest…”
And that was it, the point where it would have been better if my head had fallen off, because it would have forced me to stop reading.
Now, I get that people are unhappy with the change of leadership and the way it came about and I can see why you might not like it. I get it, because I have been uncomfortable with the way the ALP organises its affairs for a very great number of years. It’s one of the reasons I am not a member of the ALP.
What I don’t get – or perhaps what I wish I didn’t get – is why this particular manoeuvre is the one that makes you buy out of the process.
Oh, DEAR. When people call it ‘a coup’ the red rage starts to encroach on the edges of my vision. I don’t understand why this process, which has good reason to be built into the system, gets people frothing, while other things that I would think were bigger issues seem to pass under the radar completely. It’s childish and unhelpful, and I have told several people so, because the rage was too great for me to remember to mind my tongue.
Philip Adams is one of those people that I feel like I ought to like. But I find him pompous and insufferable.
I read an interview with P. Adam’s wife, when their baby was quite small.
At one stage P. Adams walked past holding a used nappy at some distance from him, (also holding his nose?), saying “poooooh, ” or something like that.
To me, that really summed up his wit and originality.
I am amazed that he deigned to descend from his Olympian heights long enough to remove said nappy but not by his reaction.
He should go back to inventing the Australian film industry again.