2013: A vintage year for idiots.

Truly, they were out in force.

Jooolya, our former Prime Minister but destined to be our worst Prime Minister ever for several decades yet, fired the starters gun in January. “Announcing the election date now enables individuals and business, investors and consumers to plan their year,” said Jooolya as she pinned the red flag on September 14 – nearly eight months away. The main beneficiary of Jooolya’s foresight was Kevin Rudd, who, armed with a deadline, stepped up his underground campaign for a return to the Lodge.

Jooolya would say she was undermined by misogynists and negativity from men in blue ties. Pretty much everyone else would say she was incompetent and incapable of accepting responsibility for her role in the government’s exceptionally long list of screwups.

Rudd himself made a large contribution to the idiot fund. Back in the saddle as Prime Minister he dithered and danced all over the calendar, saying that he wasn’t bound by Jooolya’s choice in September. Pressure from inside his party forced Rudd to declare September 7 as the day of days; in the end, he went to the polls before his nemesis would have. This was an emergency move instigated by Laborites who wanted to keep the punishment from the voters as only punishment and not a demolition.

Rudd kept his seat, though his party lost. In typically graceless style he threw a mocking ‘eat your heart out’ at his Liberal rival Bill Glasson on election night. But the new parliament was not a week old when Kruddfuhrer tearfully announced that he was quitting on the spot. The voters in his electorate will likely be eating Kevin’s heart, metaphorically speaking. Rudd leaves with his reputation intact. It was always, ALWAYS, all about Kevin.

The reaction to the Liberal win in Canberra was unexpected only in the degree of its idiocy. The left once again demonstrated its inability to coutenance defeat with declarations of an illegal win by Tony Abbot and his team. A petition was started online demanding that Her Waxen Magnificence the Governor-General shut the new Liberal government down.

The petition’s organisers have yet to take their case to the Court of Disputed Returns. Maybe they don’t have a case. Maybe they don’t have anything except kindergarten-grade tanty power.

But the idiots weren’t all in Canberra in 2013. During the middle of the year two stories revealed an intense contest between the Australian arts industry and Australia’s sports industry, both vying for recognition as supremely useless idiots. ‘Artist’ Mikayla Dwyer followed in the steps of Piero Manzoni in a performance piece that featured masked actors crapping into glass bowls onstage. Masks? Imagine the hurt feelings of the performer’s families. No parent would be worthy of the name if they didn’t turn to the person sitting beside them and murmur ‘That’s my daughter up there.’

And while the arts world was doing its best to be controversial, sports were more PC than a busload of feminists. The Australian Football League was shocked by egregious racism among its supporters. Adam Goodes was in severe need of a cup of tea and a good lie down when a young footbal fan shouted a single word at him onfield – said word being, ‘Ape’.

Ape. I’ve had that name directed at my own good self once or twice; I look back now and marvel at my resilience. Or was it insensitivity? Being a caucasian male, which Mr Goodes is not, perhaps I just accepted it as natural tribute. My place in the white European capitalist patriarchy was simply being acknowledged.

It’s best though to curb the urge for verbal offensiveness quickly and promptly. No way of knowing what it might lead to. Just look at some of the comments former Labor supremo Warren Mundine attracted when he confessed to voting for the Liberals in September. White arse-kisser. Uncle Tom. Coconut. No doubt the people who sent these cheering sentiments had just a few weeks earlier been applauding Kevin Rudd’s call for a kinder and gentler politics.

Idiots can be funny like that. It’s all sunshine and hugs, until you dare to disagree.

-oOo-

Idiots were a presence in my personal life too this year.

William S Burroughs spoke about ‘the right virus’ – a disorder that compels stonelike resistance to differing view points. When you carry the right virus you must always be right on everything.

Burroughs was writing principally about fundamentalist Christians. After watching the leftwits in Canberra for a few years I had begun to sketch out a piece called ‘The Right Virus Has Changed Sides’. During the year however I was forcibly made to understand that the right virus takes no sides, neither left nor right in politics or in any other aspect of life. It’s just there.

The high point of the year for me was my trip to America. I went with some trepidation about meeting online pals Gina Elise and Michele face to face. An encounter in the flesh could have been a disappointment and a disillusionment. Happily, I was wrong on that – and from the day I returned home it was all downhill. The hostile atmosphere in my workplace was that much more obvious after some time in a completely different environment; and the messages coming down from above became a ritual of contradictions. If the word was Black on Monday, it was White on Tuesday and then Purple With Spots on Wednesday. Middle management would deliver the instructions with a shrug and say, Work it out for yourselves, boys.

Over the last couple of months this toxic attitude seems to have invaded my entire life. I’ve barely been able to made a decision or a choice that didn’t cause me more difficulty. The only satisfaction I’ve had is winning every round – I’m pleased, but drained as well. Confronting idiots can be tiresome. Even when the situation is resolved in my favour, I’m still left asking why it had to be such hell to get to the end.

Not such a great year. But I do some have some bright spots to remember – the Getty Museum with Michele, C&O’s with Gina and Cheryl. We threw out the Circus of Ineptitude and put a government of adults into power in Canberra. And I’m making a few plans of my own for 2014.

Merry Christmas to you all. We’ll talk again in the new year.

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