Oh my god! Kevin Rudd got pissed and went to a titty bar

Big news story of the day today …Kevin Rudd visited a strip club while on a trip to New York in 2003. Big fucking deal!

However, according to Glenn Milne, this has rocked Rudd’s electoral hopes.  Milne certainly is well qualified to comment on shocking drunken behaviour.

Mr Rudd went to the club, which is a well-known haunt of UN diplomats and journalists, with New York Post editor Col Allan and Northern Territory Labor MP Warren Snowdon.   There is a certain irony in this story in that Allan is with News Limited, which is precisely the media outlet trying for all its worth to beat this story up.  According to Allan:

“Yes, we went out for a drink,” Mr Allan said.

“Yes, it was at a gentleman’s club and he (Mr Rudd) behaved like a perfect gentleman.”

Milne says he got the story from “Canberra based sources” … very close to the government I’d say (and I think I heard on the radio this afternoon, Alexander Downer’s name mentioned in dispatches).

Apart from the shock! horror!, Rudd gets pissed and touches up strippers, angle, the other shock! horror! side of this story is that Rudd did this while on a trip at taxpayers’ expense - it cost $18,000.   Well last time I heard, you’re not actually on the company’s time 24/7 when on a business trip.  In fact, getting pissed and making a goose of yourself on an overseas business trip would be par for the course for many of us.

Rudd must have been pissed indeed.  He said neither he nor Mr Snowdon had a “completely clear recollection” of whether there were semi-naked women in the club or what they were doing.    Anyway, whatever it is he didn’t do there, he has apologised for:

“But that doesn’t absolve me for going in that door in the first place. That’s where I made the error of judgment and it’s something I shouldn’t have done.”

“It’s an embarrassing thing to happen. I think no-one would welcome it. I accept that.

“But I think at the end of the day people just want you to level with them and when you’ve made a mistake, be up-front about it.”

“I own responsibility for my own actions here. I’m the bloke who took the decision to go out to this place … and that’s a foolish mistake on my part.”

Should be the end of the story.  Kevin Rudd got pissed and acted dumb … big deal!  He isn’t the first aspiring leader to do this and won’t be the last.  It detracts from his ability to lead his party and potentially the country in what ways???

Another question, since when has the role of journalists been to be cheerleaders for one side of politics or the other?  Glenn Milne and Piers Ackerman in the News press should be on the payroll of the government media unit for all the objectivity they display.  Likewise there are journos who seem to see themselves as branches of the ALP.  They are as bad as each other.