[fireside chat] in the afternoon

When you see a headline: "The brutal nature of political life is best left to the young," the first reaction is: "Yeah, right."

When the person who wrote that is the former Treasurer of a western nation, one sits up and takes notice. Peter Costello says:

The most important adjustment is the loss of privacy. Those who come to elected office late in life will find the media intrusion a form of torture, particularly if they are used to respect in their former occupations. Nothing prepares you for the first occasion when your photograph is plastered across the front page of the newspaper distributed to neighbours, children, friends, relatives and the whole country with accompanying stories about how incompetent or morally deficient you have proven to be. It hurt me for the first 20 or 30 times. After that you start to get used to it.

That explains a lot about the thick hides of politicians but now I'm going to leave the theme and make this personal instead.

Political bloggers are, in a way, politicians, without the cynicism and corruption [see expenses scandal]. What sets them apart is the feeling that they can get away with it without coming under concerted campaigns of vilification.

Peter Costello is under no illusions about political life - it is rough and whispering campaigns are all part of it. The stakes are high and the potential rewards great. The opposite is true too, as John Howard found when he not only lost the election but also lost his seat, the 2nd PM to do so.

Bloggers, on the other hand, have nothing directly to gain by lambasting the CBs, Them, the gay mafia, the feminazis et al and as long as they're fairly insignificant as bloggers, have little to lose. However, if they have numbers to the blog, then they're not only going to get hit but according to their potential for damage, they're going to have campaigns waged agaisnt them - classic Macchiavelli.

Some bloggers dish it out and cry foul when they have this done to them. It's no picnic on a combative blogger's site.

When this is done by the very people attacked, then it is par for the course and in a way, one doesn't mind. I mean, it's all part of the game to have dirty tricks done on you by the very people you're accusing of ... er ... dirty tricks.

What really does get under the guard though is when supposed supporters, miffed by who knows what, decide to adopt the same tactics and such people really can do damage, especially if they've learnt the game.

The oldest game works this way:

Mention to a friend of your target, "I've heard John Smith pulls the wings off flies." The friend says, "How should I know? He might, he might not. I wouldn't think so."

The "he might' is the part taken and then it's emailed to a third party that, "John Smith told his own best friend that he pulls the wings off flies." There's always a tenuous connection with the truth maintained.

The third party, judging that the mischief maker knows John Smith fairly well, maybe has a point and it's never investigated, never puts it to John Smith to comment.

That's how lies get a foothold.

It's dirty politics but what makes it doubly bad is that there is nothing to gain for John Smith in the first place, except to help make people aware of things. Loss of what has been gained and character assassination though are very much on the cards because such things are never done honestly.

They're always done behind the scenes.

That's why, if you have something to say about someone, you post on it, let people have their say and then that's an end of it. That's the way it should work, anyway.