Oaten outing follow-up
Still can't quite get my head around what the point of this whole outing thing was.
I mean John Major/Edwina Curry, yes - scoop. News. Potential extra angle on policy decisions. Important.
Blunkett and wassername, yes - scoop. News. Potential conflicts of interests. Highlights interconnectivity of government and media. Abuse of ministerial power to aid private life. Important.
Robin Cook/his secretary, not really. "Man away from home for extended period makes bond with someone he sees daily" is hardly news.
Oaten / some younger man, no. No conflict of interest. No extra angles on policy decisions. "Married man is secretly gay" likewise hardly news.
Guido claims the scoop, anyway. Not much to be proud of, I'd have thought, destroying the life of a minor politician and doubtless his family to boot... Still, Guido's commentors seem to be having fun - latent homophobia or just the repression of wishing they had the guts to hire some arse themselves? How about this from "Delves Broughton Jocelyn Victor Hay"? (I really hope I'm just misreading a parody here...)
"I think Oaten's prostitution policy not hypocritical rather stealthily pandering to his own homosexual interest. Another thing, the 'Right Honourable' Mark Oaten is a gross moral coward and prevaricator, unwilling to confront his deviance"This has also made Menzies Campbell go down in my estimation. I mean, what's this crap about?
"No party is entirely subject to what happens to any one individual. The party is much bigger than that and my task as acting leader is to restore a sense of unity and purpose"Fuck off, Ming - your job as a decent human being is to back your colleague by stating that it's a private matter and you're not going to comment, not to try and make political capital out of it to bolster your leadership bid.
I had no particular time for or interest in Oaten, and still don't. He always struck me as a tad smug. But if his parliamentary colleagues are going to shun him over this due to pathetic fears that their tiny party might suffer electorally (newsflash, guys - you're already at your peak, and it's downhill all the way from here no matter what you do), then any sympathy I had for the little orange bastards will entirely vanish.
8 Comments:
You're quite correct - as he's a LibDem who cares? I'm beginning, though, to think that the blogger a few weeks back (I forget who), when Kennedy was being hounded out of the leadership, who made the observation that it is always foolish to trust anyone whose family name is Campbell had a point (Alistair C. ain't no charmer, either!), despite my somewhat arch dismissal of his remark at the time and even if those bearing my own family name were on the other (and losing) side of a conflict long ago. Just goes to show ...
The guy's an M.P., he campaigns, he tries to get our votes. As a leader of a party he'll potentially be at the forefront of a campaign to be Prime Minister. Surely it's essential that the press do their job in bringing these things to light. Yes, if an M.P. has a little rent boy I think it's in the voters interest that they know.
This is democracy at it's finest, the press having the freedom to do what needs to be done, and should continue to do the dirty work until politicians get the idea and live a life one might consider normal and admirable.
"As a leader of a party he'll potentially be at the forefront of a campaign to be Prime Minister" - LOL, sorry - that made me laugh too.
Please define "normal and admirable", Dan.
"normal and admirable"
Tom Hanks.
No politicians come to mind.
Well worth remembering Gladstone on the fall of the blessed Parnell here: 'What, because a man is called leader of a party, does that constitute him a censor and a judge of morals?'
If you want moral exemplars in Parliament, I suggest you go see the Bench of Bishops.
It matters not one jot that Oaten is homosexual. What matters is that he has young children, children he used recently to show him as the good family man. Now they have several years of crap ahead of them, because, like so many others, one of their parents has put their own self-interest in a bit of casual sex first. You only get one childhood and it is the ultimate in selfishness to steal it from your own children.
Anonymous - two things to bear in mind:
1) These days, if a politician is married with kids and DOESN'T used them in a campaign, suspicions are raised. It is an expected - even required - part of political campaigning.
2) Oaten was protecting his kids admirably until the News of the World came along and plastered details of their fathers' private life all over the shop.
And a bonus, minor point: if sexuality was as easily contolled as you make out, the world wouldn't be nearly as fucked up as it is.
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