She is knitting a kangaroo as a gift for the forthcoming royal baby. I personally like it. In fact, I think it might be the best picture of Julia Gillard I've ever seen. If there was more of this, I'd be better disposed towards her. A. its reassuring that she's not useless. B. I'm fond of royalty, C. knitting is a traditional craft of which I approve. The picture shows the PM as an old fashioned girl. I also approve of that.
But today the feminist press went into hyperdrive. Some of them had conniptions. Is knitting politically correct was the question. Is it OK for a feminist to knit? is how the columnist in the Age put it. The burning issue of the day. Does the sisterhood approve of knitting? Doesn't it undermine Gillard's misogyny tantrums? The Age included graphic shots of Gillard knitting juxtaposed with Abbott in his lycra shorts looking masculine and sweaty. Oh my God, gender stereotypes! This is what passes for political commentary at the Age these days, which is exactly why myself, and hundreds of thousands of others, no longer read it. (Alright, I read it today, but its been at least ten years since I bought a copy.)
More interesting is the fact that the picture is a carefully crafted piece of PR. The pic was approved by the PM's office and is part of the on-going effort to rehabilitate the PM's image with the Australian public. The glasses are part of that too. But to what audience does the knitting pic play? Perhaps it plays to the massive 7% of male voters who have abandoned the Labor Party in the last three months? It sure doesn't play to the feminists. They were bemused. Some of them were deeply disappointed. Some of them were outraged. As if its a crime for a woman who is currently occupying the most powerful political office in the land to display old fashioned femininity. How tiresome. How utterly tiresome.
Yet that tiresome mind set pervades the Left these days. I've even stopped reading my union newsletter because of a concentration on this sort of thing. Many a university staff room will be buzzing with the 'knitting question' tomorrow as the sisters agonize over the semiological implications of the picture. Gender ideology is a toxin that is poisoning the Left, or rather has already poisoned it, at least as far as I'm concerned. I've moved on, or rather I've stayed put and the Left have wandered off into loopy land.
All the same, the Prime Minister - an avid knitter, it turns out - rises in my estimation, much as the Leader of the Opposition went up in my regard after I read his very sincere and moving tribute to the journalist Christopher Pearson who died last week.
(I pinched the title - Knit one, purl two - from Philipa Martyr, by the way, who blogged her usual high quality intelligence and wit on this matter today.)
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